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Rural Egret

#a3ac9d
Notes

Rural Egret (#A3AC9D) 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 (96°, 8%, 65%) 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
#a3ac9d
RGB
rgb(163, 172, 157)
HSL
hsl(96, 8%, 65%)
HWB
hwb(96 62% 33%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.3% 0.023 132.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6457 0.6734 0.6206)
HSV
hsv(96, 9%, 67%)
LAB
lab(69.27% -5.99 6.63)
LCH
lch(69.27% 8.93 132.12)
CMYK
cmyk(5%, 0%, 9%, 33%)

Etymology

Rural
adjective

Latin rūrālis, of-the-countryside — adjectival suffix -al. As a color modifier, rural implies a neutral-and-country-and-traditional quality, the neutral color of American-and-English-Country rural-and-traditional farmhouse-and-cottage interior-decoration-and-textile surface-finish. Sits at the neutral-and-traditional end of the grid, parallel to country and pastoral in usage.

Egret
noun

Ardeidae family — wading-birds with iconic pure-white plumage, particularly the Great-Egret (Ardea alba) of cosmopolitan-temperate wetlands. Egret color refers to an Ardea alba breeding-plumage on a Florida-Everglades wading-pool in raking sun: a pale cool gray with the matte finish of pure-white melanin-depleted feather barbs against the Ardea alba yellow-bill-and-dark-leg structural pattern.

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.

#a3ac9d
Original
#aeaa9c
Protanopia
#aca99e
Deuteranopia
#a3aba8
Tritanopia
#a9a9a9
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
2.35:1
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
8.95:1

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
##A3AC9D
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6457 0.6734 0.6206)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.023

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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