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Surveyed sage

#a1ab73
Notes

Surveyed sage (#A1AB73) is a true yellow 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 (71°, 25%, 56%) 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
#a1ab73
RGB
rgb(161, 171, 115)
HSL
hsl(71, 25%, 56%)
HWB
hwb(71 45% 33%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.9% 0.077 116.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6386 0.6693 0.4751)
HSV
hsv(71, 33%, 67%)
LAB
lab(67.98% -12.85 27.72)
LCH
lch(67.98% 30.56 114.87)
CMYK
cmyk(6%, 0%, 33%, 33%)

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.

sage
noun

Salvia officinalis, the Mediterranean kitchen herb whose silvery-green leaves give the color its name. The Latin salvia shares a root with salvuswhole, healthy — for the herb's medieval reputation as a panacea. The color refers to dried sage leaves rubbed for stuffing: a soft, slightly gray-green that's cooler than olive and warmer than mint, with the matte finish of leaf hair under a hand lens.

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.

#a1ab73
Original
#b2a56f
Protanopia
#b1a675
Deuteranopia
#a7a59d
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
2.45:1
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
8.59:1

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
##A1AB73
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6386 0.6693 0.4751)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.077

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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