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Artisanal Quartz

#a8b5aa
Notes

Artisanal Quartz (#A8B5AA) is a true green 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 (129°, 8%, 68%) 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 violet. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#a8b5aa
RGB
rgb(168, 181, 170)
HSL
hsl(129, 8%, 68%)
HWB
hwb(129 66% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(76.0% 0.021 150.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6682 0.7082 0.6698)
HSV
hsv(129, 7%, 71%)
LAB
lab(72.41% -6.62 4.05)
LCH
lch(72.41% 7.76 148.53)
CMYK
cmyk(7%, 0%, 6%, 29%)

Etymology

Artisanal
adjective

Italian artigiano, craftsman — adjectival suffix -al, derived from Latin artītiānus. As a color modifier, artisanal implies a neutral-and-small-batch-and-handcraft quality, the neutral color of farm-to-table-and-craft-bakery small-batch-and-quality-handcraft food-and-textile-and-pottery surface-finish. Sits at the neutral-and-traditional end of the grid, parallel to handcrafted and crafted in usage.

Quartz
noun

Silicon dioxide — the most abundant single mineral on Earth's continental crust, occurring as everything from beach sand to gem-grade rock crystal. Quartz as a color refers to a polished pale-gray quartz crystal: a soft, very pale slightly cool gray with the high specular shine of a translucent silicate. Cooler than pearl, warmer than mist.

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.

#a8b5aa
Original
#b5b3a9
Protanopia
#b3b1ab
Deuteranopia
#a7b4b2
Tritanopia
#b1b1b1
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
2.13:1
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
9.85:1

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
##A8B5AA
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6682 0.7082 0.6698)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.021

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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