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Whitened Sunbird

#a4b097
Notes

Whitened Sunbird (#A4B097) 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 (89°, 14%, 64%) 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
#a4b097
RGB
rgb(164, 176, 151)
HSL
hsl(89, 14%, 64%)
HWB
hwb(89 59% 31%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.1% 0.038 128.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6518 0.6887 0.6009)
HSV
hsv(89, 14%, 69%)
LAB
lab(70.30% -8.82 11.40)
LCH
lch(70.30% 14.41 127.73)
CMYK
cmyk(7%, 0%, 14%, 31%)

Etymology

Whitened
adjective

Old English hwītian, to whiten — past-participle of whiten. As a color modifier, whitened implies a pale-and-white-shifted-and-bleached quality, the pale color of Andalusian-village freshly-whitewashed-and-lime-painted village-architecture surface-finish. Sits at the pale-and-bleached end of the grid, parallel to bleached and blanched in usage.

Sunbird
noun

The family Nectariniidae — Old World sunbirds, the ecological equivalent of New World hummingbirds. Particularly Cinnyris jugularis (olive-backed sunbird) whose iridescent green throat catches direct sunlight. The color refers to a male sunbird's gorget: a saturated, slightly cool deep green with the iridescent satin finish of structural color.

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.

#a4b097
Original
#b3ac96
Protanopia
#b1ac98
Deuteranopia
#a5aea9
Tritanopia
#acacac
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
2.27:1
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
9.24:1

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
##A4B097
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6518 0.6887 0.6009)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.038

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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