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Flat sage

#a4ab6e
Notes

Flat sage (#A4AB6E) 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 (67°, 27%, 55%) 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 blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#a4ab6e
RGB
rgb(164, 171, 110)
HSL
hsl(67, 27%, 55%)
HWB
hwb(67 43% 33%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.1% 0.083 113.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6481 0.6697 0.4587)
HSV
hsv(67, 36%, 67%)
LAB
lab(68.13% -12.31 30.62)
LCH
lch(68.13% 33.00 111.90)
CMYK
cmyk(4%, 0%, 36%, 33%)

Etymology

Flat
adjective

Old Norse flatr, flat / level. As a color modifier, flat implies a clear-and-evenly-spread quality where the hue carries the matte-finish visual register of unmodulated single-plane surface. Sits at the crisp-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to level and even 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.

#a4ab6e
Original
#b3a56a
Protanopia
#b3a771
Deuteranopia
#aba49c
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
2.43:1
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
8.63:1

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
##A4AB6E
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6481 0.6697 0.4587)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.083

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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