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Drifting Egypt

#aa9c7f
Notes

Drifting Egypt (#AA9C7F) 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 (40°, 20%, 58%) 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 azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#aa9c7f
RGB
rgb(170, 156, 127)
HSL
hsl(40, 20%, 58%)
HWB
hwb(40 50% 33%)
OKLCH
oklch(69.7% 0.044 85.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6573 0.6137 0.5108)
HSV
hsv(40, 25%, 67%)
LAB
lab(64.85% 0.42 17.08)
LCH
lch(64.85% 17.08 88.58)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 8%, 25%, 33%)

Etymology

Drifting
adjective

Old Norse drift, driving — present-participle of drift. As a color modifier, drifting implies a pale-and-slow-moving-and-lateral quality where the hue carries the visual register of cloud-and-fog slow-and-lateral atmospheric movement. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to floating and wandering in usage.

Egypt
noun

The civilization that established the Western world's earliest sustained color vocabulary — and the warm yellow-tan of Egyptian sandstone, the gold of Tutankhamun's death mask, and the ochre of pharaonic tomb painting. Egypt refers to the desert sand of the Theban necropolis at dawn: a saturated, slightly cool warm yellow-tan with the matte finish of windblown quartz.

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.

#aa9c7f
Original
#a39b7d
Protanopia
#a79f80
Deuteranopia
#b19794
Tritanopia
#9d9d9d
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
2.70:1
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
7.77:1

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
##AA9C7F
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6573 0.6137 0.5108)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.044

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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