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Ragged Nettle

#838d78
Notes

Ragged Nettle (#838D78) is a true lime with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (89°, 8%, 51%) places it in the muted 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
#838d78
RGB
rgb(131, 141, 120)
HSL
hsl(89, 8%, 51%)
HWB
hwb(89 47% 45%)
OKLCH
oklch(62.9% 0.033 128.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5210 0.5517 0.4779)
HSV
hsv(89, 15%, 55%)
LAB
lab(57.30% -7.68 9.98)
LCH
lch(57.30% 12.60 127.57)
CMYK
cmyk(7%, 0%, 15%, 45%)

Etymology

Ragged
adjective

Old Norse rǫgg, shaggy hair — adjectival suffix -ed. As a color modifier, ragged implies a hushed-and-rough-edged-and-worn quality, the hushed color of multi-decade farmhouse-and-cottage heavily-worn-and-shaggy-edged everyday-clothing surface. Sits at the hushed-and-worn end of the grid, parallel to tattered and frayed in usage.

Nettle
noun

Urtica dioica, the European wild green whose stinging leaves are blanched and eaten as soup, tea, and herbal tonic — a traditional spring tonic across European folk medicine. The color refers to fresh young nettle tops: a saturated, slightly cool deep yellow-green with the matte finish of pubescent stinging-leaf 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.

#838d78
Original
#8f8a77
Protanopia
#8e8979
Deuteranopia
#848b87
Tritanopia
#898989
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
3.47:1
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
6.05:1

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
##838D78
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5210 0.5517 0.4779)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.033

This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.

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