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Reliable Sorrel

#9fb98a
Notes

Reliable Sorrel (#9FB98A) 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 (93°, 25%, 63%) 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
#9fb98a
RGB
rgb(159, 185, 138)
HSL
hsl(93, 25%, 63%)
HWB
hwb(93 54% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.4% 0.071 131.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6432 0.7224 0.5587)
HSV
hsv(93, 25%, 73%)
LAB
lab(72.16% -17.47 21.00)
LCH
lch(72.16% 27.31 129.77)
CMYK
cmyk(14%, 0%, 25%, 27%)

Etymology

Reliable
adjective

Latin re-ligāre, to bind back — adjectival suffix -able. As a color modifier, reliable implies a clear-and-trustworthy-and-consistent quality where the hue carries the visual register of dependable-and-consistent design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to dependable and trustworthy in usage.

Sorrel
noun

Rumex acetosa, the European dock-family green whose tart oxalic-acid leaves are eaten as soup ingredient (soupe d'oseille) and salad green. The color refers to fresh sorrel leaves in spring: a saturated, slightly muted yellow-green with the matte finish of arrow-shaped leaves. Cooler than spinach.

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.

#9fb98a
Original
#bdb287
Protanopia
#b9b08c
Deuteranopia
#a0b5ac
Tritanopia
#b0b0b0
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
2.15:1
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
9.78:1

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
##9FB98A
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6432 0.7224 0.5587)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.071

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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