colors
Back to gallery

Smooth Guacamole

#a5d38a
Notes

Smooth Guacamole (#A5D38A) 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 (98°, 45%, 68%) 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 indigo. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#a5d38a
RGB
rgb(165, 211, 138)
HSL
hsl(98, 45%, 68%)
HWB
hwb(98 54% 17%)
OKLCH
oklch(81.6% 0.110 134.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6837 0.8223 0.5703)
HSV
hsv(98, 35%, 83%)
LAB
lab(79.85% -28.14 31.41)
LCH
lch(79.85% 42.17 131.86)
CMYK
cmyk(22%, 0%, 35%, 17%)

Etymology

Smooth
adjective

Old English smōþ, level, polished — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as continuous without texture or break. Smooth tan, smooth gray: moderate saturation combined with optical evenness. Sits in the crisp-bucket alongside even.

Guacamole
noun

The Mexican avocado-based dip — fresh avocado mashed with lime, cilantro, salsa, and salt, traced to pre-Columbian Aztec cuisine via the Nahuatl āhuacamolli (avocado sauce). Guacamole color refers to fresh-mashed guacamole in a molcajete: a soft, slightly muted yellow-green with the matte finish of pureed avocado-and-lime. Drier than avocado.

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.

#a5d38a
Original
#d9c885
Protanopia
#d1c58e
Deuteranopia
#a5cec0
Tritanopia
#c4c4c4
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
1.71:1
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
12.28:1

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
##A5D38A
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6837 0.8223 0.5703)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.110

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.

Related Colors

Canvas