colors
Back to gallery

Antiseptic Mead

#a37824
Notes

Antiseptic Mead (#A37824) 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 (40°, 64%, 39%) 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 azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#a37824
RGB
rgb(163, 120, 36)
HSL
hsl(40, 64%, 39%)
HWB
hwb(40 14% 36%)
OKLCH
oklch(60.1% 0.111 79.8)
HSV
hsv(40, 78%, 64%)
LAB
lab(53.33% 8.82 49.76)
LCH
lch(53.33% 50.53 79.95)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 26%, 78%, 36%)

Etymology

Antiseptic
adjective

Greek anti- (against) plus sēptikós (putrefying) — adjectival suffix -ic. As a color modifier, antiseptic implies a clear-and-disinfected-and-clinical quality, the crisp color of medical-laboratory and operating-theater hand-scrub-and-sanitizer surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to sterile and sanitary 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.

#a37824
Original
#897916
Protanopia
#938428
Deuteranopia
#b16c67
Tritanopia
#7b7b7b
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
3.99:1
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
5.27:1

Related Colors

Canvas