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Starched Pommery

#a4ae5e
Notes

Starched Pommery (#A4AE5E) 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 (68°, 33%, 53%) 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 blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#a4ae5e
RGB
rgb(164, 174, 94)
HSL
hsl(68, 33%, 53%)
HWB
hwb(68 37% 32%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.5% 0.105 114.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6503 0.6811 0.4085)
HSV
hsv(68, 46%, 68%)
LAB
lab(68.73% -15.71 39.68)
LCH
lch(68.73% 42.67 111.59)
CMYK
cmyk(6%, 0%, 46%, 32%)

Etymology

Starched
adjective

Old English stercan, to stiffen — past-participle of starch. As a color modifier, starched implies a clear-and-stiff-and-formal quality, the crisp color of Edwardian-period formal-evening-shirt-and-collar starched-and-pressed dress-attire. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to pressed and ironed in usage.

Pommery
noun

The Champagne house founded in Reims in 1858 — and the saturated yellow of Pommery Brut Royal vintage labeling. Pommery refers to a vintage Pommery Champagne in a flute: a soft, slightly cool warm pale yellow with the optical clarity of long-aged sparkling wine. Warmer than champagne.

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.

#a4ae5e
Original
#b8a757
Protanopia
#b7a862
Deuteranopia
#aca69b
Tritanopia
#a6a6a6
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
2.39:1
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
8.79:1

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
##A4AE5E
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6503 0.6811 0.4085)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.105

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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