Balanced Maize
Balanced Maize (#9B8C3D) is a true amber with an earthy character. It leans grounded and natural, the kind of color that plays well with wood, clay, linen, and warm neutrals. Its HSL profile (50°, 44%, 42%) 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.
Etymology
The past participle of balance, to weigh evenly. Used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as neither overcommitted nor restrained. Balanced sage, balanced taupe: moderate saturation combined with optical equilibrium. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside even.
Zea mays, the New World grass domesticated in the Balsas River valley of Mexico nine thousand years ago — now the largest cereal crop on Earth by yield. The color refers to dried yellow dent corn at harvest: a clean, slightly muted gold-yellow with the matte finish of cured grain. The wider Spanish maíz keeps the original Taíno word; English borrowed it before adopting corn in the United States.
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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
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.