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Surveyed Resin

#9e8b2d
Notes

Surveyed Resin (#9E8B2D) 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 (50°, 56%, 40%) 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
#9e8b2d
RGB
rgb(158, 139, 45)
HSL
hsl(50, 56%, 40%)
HWB
hwb(50 18% 38%)
OKLCH
oklch(63.6% 0.113 97.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6072 0.5478 0.2438)
HSV
hsv(50, 72%, 62%)
LAB
lab(57.97% -3.63 50.45)
LCH
lch(57.97% 50.58 94.12)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 12%, 72%, 38%)

Etymology

Surveyed
adjective

Old French surveer, to look upon — past-participle of survey. As a color modifier, surveyed implies a clear-and-measured-and-coordinated quality, the crisp color of Mason-Dixon-Line-and-Royal-Navy-Hydrographic scientific-and-cadastral land-and-sea surveying tradition. Sits at the crisp-and-mapped end of the grid, parallel to mapped and plotted in usage.

Resin
noun

Plant-secreted aromatic compounds — pine sap, frankincense, copal, dammar — used as the binder for varnishes, the source of incense, and the pigment-binder for medieval European paint. The color refers to fresh pine resin on bark: a saturated, slightly cool pale gold-yellow with the slight translucency of fresh tree sap.

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.

#9e8b2d
Original
#99881f
Protanopia
#9e8e32
Deuteranopia
#ab8078
Tritanopia
#888888
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
3.40:1
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
6.18:1

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
##9E8B2D
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6072 0.5478 0.2438)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.113

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.

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