colors
Back to gallery

Levitated Gyokuro

#a9b9aa
Notes

Levitated Gyokuro (#A9B9AA) 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 (124°, 10%, 69%) 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
#a9b9aa
RGB
rgb(169, 185, 170)
HSL
hsl(124, 10%, 69%)
HWB
hwb(124 66% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(76.9% 0.027 147.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6744 0.7235 0.6711)
HSV
hsv(124, 9%, 73%)
LAB
lab(73.57% -8.38 5.73)
LCH
lch(73.57% 10.15 145.66)
CMYK
cmyk(9%, 0%, 8%, 27%)

Etymology

Levitated
adjective

Latin levitās, lightness — past-participle of levitate. As a color modifier, levitated implies a pale-and-suspended-and-lifted quality where the hue carries the visual register of magic-trick-and-stage-illusion lifted-and-suspended-state spatial-condition. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to floating and buoyant in usage.

Gyokuro
noun

The premium Japanese green tea grown in shade for three weeks before harvest — concentrating chlorophyll and theanine. Gyokuro (玉露 — jewel dew) is the most expensive non-matcha Japanese tea. The color refers to fresh-brewed gyokuro: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the optical depth of shaded-leaf tea.

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.

#a9b9aa
Original
#bab6a9
Protanopia
#b7b4ab
Deuteranopia
#a8b8b5
Tritanopia
#b5b5b5
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
2.06:1
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
10.21:1

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
##A9B9AA
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6744 0.7235 0.6711)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.027

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