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Steady Jīnhuáng

#aaae5f
Notes

Steady Jīnhuáng (#AAAE5F) is a true yellow 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 (63°, 33%, 53%) 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 blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#aaae5f
RGB
rgb(170, 174, 95)
HSL
hsl(63, 33%, 53%)
HWB
hwb(63 37% 32%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.0% 0.103 111.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6695 0.6818 0.4124)
HSV
hsv(63, 45%, 68%)
LAB
lab(69.22% -13.14 39.87)
LCH
lch(69.22% 41.98 108.24)
CMYK
cmyk(2%, 0%, 45%, 32%)

Etymology

Steady
adjective

Old English stede, place, position — drifted to mean firm and unmoving. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as reliable rather than dramatic. Steady gray, steady green: moderate saturation combined with optical calmness. Sits in the crisp-bucket center alongside settled.

Jīnhuáng
noun

Chinese for gold-yellow — combining jīn (gold) and huáng (yellow). Used in the imperial-yellow silks of late Qing dynasty court robes and the gilt-and-yellow lacquer of Buddhist altarpieces. The color refers to jīnhuáng-glazed Yongzheng-period porcelain: a saturated, slightly cool deep gold-yellow with the high gloss of fired glaze.

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.

#aaae5f
Original
#b9a858
Protanopia
#b9aa63
Deuteranopia
#b3a69b
Tritanopia
#a7a7a7
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
2.35:1
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
8.93:1

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
##AAAE5F
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6695 0.6818 0.4124)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.103

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.

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