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Elemental Egret

#9b9486
Notes

Elemental Egret (#9B9486) 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 (40°, 10%, 57%) 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
#9b9486
RGB
rgb(155, 148, 134)
HSL
hsl(40, 10%, 57%)
HWB
hwb(40 53% 39%)
OKLCH
oklch(66.9% 0.022 84.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6031 0.5813 0.5312)
HSV
hsv(40, 14%, 61%)
LAB
lab(61.54% 0.08 8.32)
LCH
lch(61.54% 8.32 89.47)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 5%, 14%, 39%)

Etymology

Elemental
adjective

Latin elementum, element — adjectival suffix -al. As a color modifier, elemental implies a neutral-and-foundational-and-natural-element quality where the hue carries the visual register of earth-and-stone-and-water-and-air foundational-and-elemental natural-mineral-and-pigment surface. Sits at the neutral-and-foundational end of the grid, parallel to foundational and primal in usage.

Egret
noun

Ardeidae family — wading-birds with iconic pure-white plumage, particularly the Great-Egret (Ardea alba) of cosmopolitan-temperate wetlands. Egret color refers to an Ardea alba breeding-plumage on a Florida-Everglades wading-pool in raking sun: a pale cool gray with the matte finish of pure-white melanin-depleted feather barbs against the Ardea alba yellow-bill-and-dark-leg structural pattern.

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.

#9b9486
Original
#989485
Protanopia
#9a9586
Deuteranopia
#9f9190
Tritanopia
#949494
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
3.01:1
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
6.97:1

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
##9B9486
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6031 0.5813 0.5312)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.022

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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