Unblemished Sansho
Unblemished Sansho (#859A68) 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 (85°, 20%, 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.
Etymology
Old French blesmir, to wound — negative-prefix un- plus past-participle of blemish. As a color modifier, unblemished implies a clear-and-flawless quality where the hue carries no defect or imperfection. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to pristine and spotless in usage.
Zanthoxylum piperitum, the Japanese sansho pepper — related to Sichuan peppercorn, with citrus-tinted numbing flavor used in unagi glazes and the spice mix shichimi tōgarashi. The color refers to fresh-ground sansho powder in a small ceramic bowl: a saturated, slightly cool yellow-green with the matte finish of dried citrus-family seed.
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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.