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Drawn Mahogany

#8a5f21
Notes

Drawn Mahogany (#8A5F21) 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 (35°, 61%, 34%) 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 azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#8a5f21
RGB
rgb(138, 95, 33)
HSL
hsl(35, 61%, 34%)
HWB
hwb(35 13% 46%)
OKLCH
oklch(52.0% 0.095 72.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5162 0.3797 0.1773)
HSV
hsv(35, 76%, 54%)
LAB
lab(43.80% 11.54 40.74)
LCH
lch(43.80% 42.34 74.18)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 31%, 76%, 46%)

Etymology

Drawn
adjective

Old English dragan, to draw — past-participle of draw. As a color modifier, drawn implies a clear-and-line-and-mark quality, the crisp color of Old-Master-and-Modernist hand-drawn studio-and-life-class observational-drawing graphite-and-charcoal lines. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to etched and drafted in usage.

Mahogany
noun

The genus Swietenia — particularly S. macrophylla, the South and Central American hardwood prized since the eighteenth century for furniture and ship building. The color refers to a freshly polished Honduras mahogany table: a deep, slightly red-shifted dark brown with the satin finish of high-density tropical hardwood.

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.

#8a5f21
Original
#6e6119
Protanopia
#786c23
Deuteranopia
#975452
Tritanopia
#646464
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
5.62:1
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
3.74:1

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
##8A5F21
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5162 0.3797 0.1773)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.095

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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