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Surveyed Mead

#a1650c
Notes

Surveyed Mead (#A1650C) is a deep amber with a jewel character. It carries the deep, saturated richness of a gemstone. Authoritative and slightly formal, it works well for type and heavy UI elements. Its HSL profile (36°, 86%, 34%) places it in the highly saturated band at a dark lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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
#a1650c
RGB
rgb(161, 101, 12)
HSL
hsl(36, 86%, 34%)
HWB
hwb(36 5% 37%)
OKLCH
oklch(56.0% 0.119 68.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5980 0.4067 0.1467)
HSV
hsv(36, 93%, 63%)
LAB
lab(48.15% 17.98 53.09)
LCH
lch(48.15% 56.05 71.29)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 37%, 93%, 37%)

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.

Mead
noun

Honey wine — fermented honey-and-water, one of the oldest known alcoholic beverages, central to Norse and Anglo-Saxon halls. The color refers to a young Polish miód pitny: a soft, slightly cool warm gold-yellow with the optical clarity of honey-derived alcohol. Warmer than champagne, lighter than whiskey.

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.

#a1650c
Original
#796a00
Protanopia
#87780f
Deuteranopia
#b05656
Tritanopia
#6b6b6b
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).
AAon White
4.79:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AA Largeon Black
4.38:1

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
##A1650C
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5980 0.4067 0.1467)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.119

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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