colors
Back to gallery

Sharp Microgreen

#9aec85
Notes

Sharp Microgreen (#9AEC85) is a soft green 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 (108°, 73%, 72%) places it in the balanced band at a light lightness. It works as a background wash, large-area fill, or soft illustration tone. Add a darker ink of the same hue when you need type over it. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary violet. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#9aec85
RGB
rgb(154, 236, 133)
HSL
hsl(108, 73%, 72%)
HWB
hwb(108 52% 7%)
OKLCH
oklch(86.7% 0.158 139.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6761 0.9171 0.5656)
HSV
hsv(108, 44%, 93%)
LAB
lab(86.28% -43.94 42.12)
LCH
lch(86.28% 60.87 136.21)
CMYK
cmyk(35%, 0%, 44%, 7%)

Etymology

Sharp
adjective

Old English scearp, cutting, pointed — applied metaphorically to color since the seventeenth century for hues that read as definite and edge-defined. Sharp red, sharp green: the implication is saturation combined with high-contrast crispness. Sits in the bright-bucket center alongside crisp and clear, with a slightly more incisive edge.

Microgreen
noun

The very young (7–14 days post-germination) edible seedlings of vegetables and herbs — popularized in fine-dining restaurants as bright color-and-texture garnish. The color refers to a tray of fresh basil microgreens: a saturated, slightly cool fresh yellow-green with the optical brightness of just-emerged cotyledons.

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.

#9aec85
Original
#f2dd7d
Protanopia
#e5d58b
Deuteranopia
#95e6d3
Tritanopia
#d3d3d3
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).
Failon White
1.43:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon Black
14.71:1

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
##9AEC85
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6761 0.9171 0.5656)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.158

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.

Related Colors

Canvas