Lurid Custard
Lurid Custard (#A6BE39) is a true yellow with an earthy character. It leans grounded and natural, the kind of color that plays well with wood, clay, linen, and warm neutrals. Its HSL profile (71°, 54%, 48%) 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.
Etymology
Latin lūridus, pale-yellow / sickly — sharing root with lūror (yellowish-pallor). As a color modifier, lurid implies a saturated-and-shocking-and-sickly-bright quality, the bright color of Penny-Dreadful-and-Pulp-Fiction sensational-cover-art bright-and-pulpy printing. Sits at the bright-and-shocking end of the grid, parallel to garish and gaudy in usage.
A cooked mixture of egg yolks and milk or cream — the foundational sauce of European pastry from medieval times forward. The color refers to a chilled vanilla custard or crème anglaise: a soft, slightly off-white yellow with the satiny surface of cooked egg protein. Lighter than yolk (the eggs are diluted), warmer than cream, with the kitchen-canon familiarity of an everyday culinary 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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.