Bright Cornsilk
Bright Cornsilk (#A9A40E) is a true yellow with a jewel character. It carries the deep, saturated richness of a gemstone. Authoritative and slightly formal, it works well for type and heavy UI elements. Its HSL profile (58°, 85%, 36%) places it in the highly saturated band at a mid lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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.
Etymology
Old English beorht, shining, luminous — cognate with the German Bracht, splendor. Applied to color since at least the medieval period for hues that read as luminous: not just light in value but optically active, as if scattering more light back than a dimmer color of the same lightness would. Sits at the bright-bucket center alongside vivid and brilliant.
The fine pale-yellow filaments that emerge from the top of a corn ear — each silk is the style of a single ovary, and a single corn kernel won't develop without one being pollinated. The color is fresh cornsilk on an Iowa August ear: a soft, very pale yellow with the optical translucency of plant fiber. Lighter than straw, warmer than ivory, with the agricultural-summer association of a Midwestern field at silking.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
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.