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Chilled quartz

#ac9baf
Notes

Chilled quartz (#AC9BAF) is a true violet 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 (291°, 11%, 65%) 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 green. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#ac9baf
RGB
rgb(172, 155, 175)
HSL
hsl(291, 11%, 65%)
HWB
hwb(291 61% 31%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.1% 0.034 321.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6633 0.6102 0.6808)
HSV
hsv(291, 11%, 69%)
LAB
lab(65.99% 9.94 -8.10)
LCH
lch(65.99% 12.82 320.80)
CMYK
cmyk(2%, 11%, 0%, 31%)

Etymology

Chilled
adjective

Old English cele, cold — past-participle of chill. As a color modifier, chilled implies a pale-and-cool-and-cool-shifted quality, the pale color of Champagne-and-Prosecco properly-chilled-and-iced-bucket effervescent-wine cool-temperature presentation. Sits at the pale-and-cool end of the grid, parallel to frosty and cool 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.

#ac9baf
Original
#999fb0
Protanopia
#9da1ae
Deuteranopia
#ad9da2
Tritanopia
#a0a0a0
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
2.60:1
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
8.06:1

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
##AC9BAF
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6633 0.6102 0.6808)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.034

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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