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Glancing Brioche

#ad9e83
Notes

Glancing Brioche (#AD9E83) 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 (39°, 20%, 60%) 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
#ad9e83
RGB
rgb(173, 158, 131)
HSL
hsl(39, 20%, 60%)
HWB
hwb(39 51% 32%)
OKLCH
oklch(70.5% 0.042 82.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6685 0.6217 0.5256)
HSV
hsv(39, 24%, 68%)
LAB
lab(65.73% 1.10 16.12)
LCH
lch(65.73% 16.16 86.10)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 9%, 24%, 32%)

Etymology

Glancing
adjective

Old French glacier, to slide — present-participle of glance. As a color modifier, glancing implies a pale-and-side-and-tangential-touching quality where the hue carries the visual register of swordsman-and-archer side-touching-and-tangential glance-blow movement. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to skimming and brushing in usage.

Brioche
noun

The French enriched bread — egg- and butter-rich dough that produces a soft, golden, slightly sweet loaf used in brioche à tête, pain au lait, and kouign-amann. The color refers to the inside of a freshly baked brioche: a soft, slightly warm pale yellow with the matte finish of egg-rich crumb.

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.

#ad9e83
Original
#a59d81
Protanopia
#a9a184
Deuteranopia
#b49997
Tritanopia
#9f9f9f
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
2.63:1
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
8.00:1

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
##AD9E83
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6685 0.6217 0.5256)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.042

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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