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Plain Oregano

#9cab7f
Notes

Plain Oregano (#9CAB7F) is a true lime 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 (80°, 21%, 58%) 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 indigo. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#9cab7f
RGB
rgb(156, 171, 127)
HSL
hsl(80, 21%, 58%)
HWB
hwb(80 50% 33%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.8% 0.063 123.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6227 0.6687 0.5152)
HSV
hsv(80, 26%, 67%)
LAB
lab(67.82% -13.07 20.97)
LCH
lch(67.82% 24.71 121.94)
CMYK
cmyk(9%, 0%, 26%, 33%)

Etymology

Plain
adjective

Latin planus, flat, level — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as undecorated and direct. Plain white, plain blue: moderate saturation, no shift, no surface effect. Sits in the crisp-bucket center, with the implication of restraint rather than absence.

Oregano
noun

Origanum vulgare, the Mediterranean herb essential to Italian and Greek cooking — pizza, salsa pomodoro, Greek salad dressings. The color refers to fresh oregano sprigs in a Greek kitchen: a saturated, slightly muted yellow-green with the matte finish of small clustered mint-family leaves.

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.

#9cab7f
Original
#b0a67c
Protanopia
#aea581
Deuteranopia
#9fa79f
Tritanopia
#a5a5a5
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
2.46:1
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
8.55:1

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
##9CAB7F
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6227 0.6687 0.5152)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.063

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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