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Sure Sage

#85ae70
Notes

Sure Sage (#85AE70) is a true green 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 (100°, 28%, 56%) 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 violet. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#85ae70
RGB
rgb(133, 174, 112)
HSL
hsl(100, 28%, 56%)
HWB
hwb(100 44% 32%)
OKLCH
oklch(70.5% 0.097 135.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5546 0.6778 0.4640)
HSV
hsv(100, 36%, 68%)
LAB
lab(66.85% -25.46 27.47)
LCH
lch(66.85% 37.46 132.82)
CMYK
cmyk(24%, 0%, 36%, 32%)

Etymology

Sure
adjective

Old French seur, certain — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as confident and stable. Sure red, sure blue: moderate saturation combined with optical commitment. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside steady and true.

Sage
noun

Salvia officinalis, the Mediterranean kitchen herb whose silvery-green leaves give the color its name. The Latin salvia shares a root with salvuswhole, healthy — for the herb's medieval reputation as a panacea. The color refers to dried sage leaves rubbed for stuffing: a soft, slightly gray-green that's cooler than olive and warmer than mint, with the matte finish of leaf hair under a hand lens.

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.

#85ae70
Original
#b3a56c
Protanopia
#aca173
Deuteranopia
#85aa9e
Tritanopia
#a1a1a1
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).
Failon White
2.53:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon Black
8.29:1

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
##85AE70
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5546 0.6778 0.4640)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.097

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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