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Bucolic Pewter

#8a909d
Notes

Bucolic Pewter (#8A909D) is a true azure 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 (221°, 9%, 58%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#8a909d
RGB
rgb(138, 144, 157)
HSL
hsl(221, 9%, 58%)
HWB
hwb(221 54% 38%)
OKLCH
oklch(65.3% 0.021 265.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5454 0.5639 0.6110)
HSV
hsv(221, 12%, 62%)
LAB
lab(59.69% 0.54 -7.61)
LCH
lch(59.69% 7.63 274.06)
CMYK
cmyk(12%, 8%, 0%, 38%)

Etymology

Bucolic
adjective

Greek boukolikós, of-cattle-herding — adjectival suffix -ic. As a color modifier, bucolic implies a neutral-and-rural-and-pastoral quality, the neutral color of Constable-Stour-Valley-painting and Beethoven-Pastoral idyllic-rural-pastoral mood-evoking color treatment. Sits at the neutral-and-traditional end of the grid, parallel to pastoral and idyllic in usage.

Pewter
noun

An alloy of tin with copper, antimony, and (historically) lead — pre-industrial tableware metal of European households before china replaced it in the eighteenth century. The color refers to a Georgian pewter tankard: a soft, slightly muted gray with the satin finish of a cast and polished alloy. Cooler than bronze, warmer than silver, with the archaic-domestic weight of a metal that aged darker as households used it.

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.

#8a909d
Original
#8c919e
Protanopia
#8b8f9d
Deuteranopia
#869294
Tritanopia
#909090
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
3.20:1
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
6.56:1

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
##8A909D
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5454 0.5639 0.6110)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.021

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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