colors
Back to gallery

Plumb Bourbon

#9a7d23
Notes

Plumb Bourbon (#9A7D23) is a true 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 (45°, 63%, 37%) places it in the balanced 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 blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#9a7d23
RGB
rgb(154, 125, 35)
HSL
hsl(45, 63%, 37%)
HWB
hwb(45 14% 40%)
OKLCH
oklch(60.1% 0.110 90.1)
HSV
hsv(45, 77%, 60%)
LAB
lab(53.66% 1.82 50.12)
LCH
lch(53.66% 50.15 87.92)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 19%, 77%, 40%)

Etymology

Plumb
adjective

Latin plumbum, lead — referring to the lead-weighted plumb-line of pre-modern carpentry. As a color modifier, plumb implies a clear-and-vertical-true quality where the hue carries the visual register of gravity-aligned-and-perfectly-vertical surface. Sits at the crisp-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to level and squared in usage.

Bourbon
noun

American corn-based whiskey — distilled and aged in new charred-oak barrels under U.S. federal regulation. The charring gives bourbon its characteristically saturated warm brown color. The color refers to a 10-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon: a saturated, slightly red-shifted warm brown with the optical depth of new-oak-aged spirit.

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.

#9a7d23
Original
#8c7c13
Protanopia
#938428
Deuteranopia
#a7726b
Tritanopia
#7d7d7d
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
3.94:1
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
5.33:1

Related Colors

Canvas