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Pleasant Mead

#79661d
Notes

Pleasant Mead (#79661D) is a deep amber with a jewel character. It carries the deep, saturated richness of a gemstone. Authoritative and slightly formal, it works well for type and heavy UI elements. Its HSL profile (48°, 61%, 29%) places it in the balanced band at a dark lightness. It works well as a headline, icon, or deep background in an otherwise light layout, pairing cleanly with cream, bone, and warm neutrals. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#79661d
RGB
rgb(121, 102, 29)
HSL
hsl(48, 61%, 29%)
HWB
hwb(48 11% 53%)
OKLCH
oklch(51.5% 0.093 94.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4624 0.4028 0.1683)
HSV
hsv(48, 76%, 47%)
LAB
lab(43.74% -0.81 41.79)
LCH
lch(43.74% 41.80 91.11)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 16%, 76%, 53%)

Etymology

Pleasant
adjective

From the French plaisant, pleasing — used as a color modifier since the fifteenth century for hues that read as agreeable, the kind of color that wears well over a long viewing without becoming demanding or fatiguing. Pleasant green, pleasant rose: moderate saturation combined with optical comfort. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside easy and calm.

Mead
noun

Honey wine — fermented honey-and-water, one of the oldest known alcoholic beverages, central to Norse and Anglo-Saxon halls. The color refers to a young Polish miód pitny: a soft, slightly cool warm gold-yellow with the optical clarity of honey-derived alcohol. Warmer than champagne, lighter than whiskey.

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.

#79661d
Original
#716411
Protanopia
#766a21
Deuteranopia
#835d58
Tritanopia
#656565
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).
AAon White
5.63:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AA Largeon Black
3.73:1

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
##79661D
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4624 0.4028 0.1683)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.093

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.

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