colors
Back to gallery

Gentle Amber

#948d7b
Notes

Gentle Amber (#948D7B) is a true amber with a warm character. It leans warm, pulling light toward red, orange, and yellow. Naturally inviting, it suits editorial and hospitality contexts. Its HSL profile (43°, 10%, 53%) 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 azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#948d7b
RGB
rgb(148, 141, 123)
HSL
hsl(43, 10%, 53%)
HWB
hwb(43 48% 42%)
OKLCH
oklch(64.4% 0.027 89.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5756 0.5539 0.4898)
HSV
hsv(43, 17%, 58%)
LAB
lab(58.77% -0.58 10.54)
LCH
lch(58.77% 10.56 93.15)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 5%, 17%, 42%)

Etymology

Gentle
adjective

Latin gentilis, of the same family, kind — drifted to mean mild. Used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as soft and unimposing. Gentle gray, gentle blue: low saturation combined with optical mildness. Sits at the hushed-bucket alongside soft and tender.

Amber
noun

Fossilized tree resin — pine and conifer sap that flowed sixty million years ago and slowly polymerized in Baltic and Dominican forests. The color refers to a polished cabochon of true Baltic amber: a warm, slightly translucent gold-orange with the depth of resin and the occasional inclusion of trapped insects. Softer than honey, deeper than topaz, with the mineral light of a fossil that still feels organic.

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.

#948d7b
Original
#918c7a
Protanopia
#938e7c
Deuteranopia
#988a88
Tritanopia
#8d8d8d
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
3.30:1
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
6.36:1

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
##948D7B
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5756 0.5539 0.4898)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.027

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.

Related Colors

Canvas