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Waxen Aloe

#8a9477
Notes

Waxen Aloe (#8A9477) 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 (81°, 12%, 52%) 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
#8a9477
RGB
rgb(138, 148, 119)
HSL
hsl(81, 12%, 52%)
HWB
hwb(81 47% 42%)
OKLCH
oklch(65.0% 0.043 123.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5484 0.5791 0.4774)
HSV
hsv(81, 20%, 58%)
LAB
lab(59.81% -9.00 14.15)
LCH
lch(59.81% 16.77 122.45)
CMYK
cmyk(7%, 0%, 20%, 42%)

Etymology

Waxen
adjective

Old English weax, wax — adjectival suffix -en. As a color modifier, waxen implies a pale-and-translucent-and-soft quality, the pale color of beeswax-and-paraffin hand-rolled-and-poured candle-and-wax-tablet surface-finish. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to pearly and milky in usage.

Aloe
noun

Aloe vera, the succulent whose translucent inner leaf gel has been used as a cosmetic and medicinal salve since classical antiquity. The color refers to a fresh aloe leaf in cross-section: a soft, slightly cool yellow-green with the satin finish of succulent leaf-tissue.

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.

#8a9477
Original
#989075
Protanopia
#969078
Deuteranopia
#8c918c
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
3.19:1
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
6.58:1

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
##8A9477
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5484 0.5791 0.4774)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.043

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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