colors
Back to gallery

Practical Pixie Moss

#638f39
Notes

Practical Pixie Moss (#638F39) is a true lime with an earthy character. It leans grounded and natural, the kind of color that plays well with wood, clay, linen, and warm neutrals. Its HSL profile (91°, 43%, 39%) places it in the balanced band at a mid lightness. It works across type, buttons, and borders, saturated enough to feel deliberate but balanced enough to not fight the rest of the palette. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary indigo. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#638f39
RGB
rgb(99, 143, 57)
HSL
hsl(91, 43%, 39%)
HWB
hwb(91 22% 44%)
OKLCH
oklch(59.9% 0.126 131.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4254 0.5561 0.2700)
HSV
hsv(91, 60%, 56%)
LAB
lab(54.65% -30.15 40.18)
LCH
lch(54.65% 50.23 126.88)
CMYK
cmyk(31%, 0%, 60%, 44%)

Etymology

Practical
adjective

Greek praktikós, practical — adjectival suffix -al. As a color modifier, practical implies a clear-and-purpose-fit-and-everyday quality where the hue carries the visual register of Shaker-and-Quaker utilitarian-and-functional everyday-life craft. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to functional and workmanlike in usage.

Pixie
modifier

English Cornish piskie, small-mischievous-fairy. As a color modifier, pixie implies a small-mischievous-Cornish-Devon-fairy quality, the visual register of Cornish-and-Devon-pixie-folk hand-small-mischievous-Cornish-Devon-fairy Cornish-and-Devon-pixie-folk-and-moorland-fairy pixie-and-small-mischievous-fairy surfaces under Cornish-and-Devon-pixie-folk-and-moorland-fairy Bodmin-Moor-and-Dartmoor-stone-circle moorland-fairy-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to sprite and gnome in usage.

Moss
noun

Bryophyta — the nonvascular plants that colonized land 470 million years ago, before vascular plants and far before flowers. The color refers to a thick mat of Hypnum or sphagnum on a temperate forest floor: a soft, slightly yellow-shifted green with the velvet texture of millimeter-scale leaves. Dustier than fern, deeper than lichen, with the slow patience of a plant that lives by absorbing rain through its surface.

Closest matches

The nearest named color in three reference sources, ranked by perceptual distance (ΔE76 in CIELAB). ΔE < 1 is imperceptible to most viewers; ΔE > 10 is clearly different. When two sources point to the same hex they’re merged into one tile; click any to open that color’s page.

Variations

Click any swatch to explore

Harmonies

Accessibility

Color-vision simulation

How this color appears to viewers with the four major color-vision-deficiency types. Computed via the Machado (2009) physiologically-based model. If a tile matches the original, the color reads the same to that viewer.

#638f39
Original
#958530
Protanopia
#8f823f
Deuteranopia
#64897c
Tritanopia
#7f7f7f
Achromatopsia
WCAG contrast

The color used as foreground text against pure white and pure black, with the contrast ratio and WCAG 2.1 grade. Aim for AA (4.5:1) for body text and AA Large (3:1) for 18 pt+ headlines; AAA (7:1) is the gold standard for long-form reading surfaces.

The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AA Largeon White
3.81:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon Black
5.52:1

Wide gamut

Display P3 representation

The CSS Color 4 wide-gamut form of this color. Both swatches render the same color on every display — the P3 form only diverges from sRGB when a designer pushes channels outside sRGB's reach.

sRGB hex
sRGB hex
##638F39
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4254 0.5561 0.2700)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.126

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

Related Colors

Canvas