colors
Back to gallery

Spotless Mullein

#a6a17c
Notes

Spotless Mullein (#A6A17C) is a true amber 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 (53°, 19%, 57%) 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
#a6a17c
RGB
rgb(166, 161, 124)
HSL
hsl(53, 19%, 57%)
HWB
hwb(53 49% 35%)
OKLCH
oklch(70.4% 0.052 101.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6476 0.6320 0.5019)
HSV
hsv(53, 25%, 65%)
LAB
lab(65.79% -4.31 19.97)
LCH
lch(65.79% 20.43 102.18)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 3%, 25%, 35%)

Etymology

Spotless
adjective

Old English spott (spot) plus suffix -less. As a color modifier, spotless implies a clear-and-unmarked quality where the hue carries no contaminating speck or stain. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to pristine and unblemished in usage.

Mullein
noun

Verbascum thapsus, the European biennial whose tall yellow flower spikes appear in second-year growth. Used in classical antiquity as a torch (oiled flower spikes) and as a medicinal cough treatment. The color refers to a fresh Mullein flower spike at midsummer: a saturated, slightly cool yellow with the matte finish of small five-petaled flowers along a tall stem.

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.

#a6a17c
Original
#a89e7a
Protanopia
#aaa17d
Deuteranopia
#ad9c97
Tritanopia
#9f9f9f
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
2.62:1
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
8.01:1

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
##A6A17C
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6476 0.6320 0.5019)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.052

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.

Related Colors

Canvas