colors
Back to gallery

Veiled Sodiumlight

#b09c8a
Notes

Veiled Sodiumlight (#B09C8A) is a true orange 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 (28°, 19%, 62%) 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
#b09c8a
RGB
rgb(176, 156, 138)
HSL
hsl(28, 19%, 62%)
HWB
hwb(28 54% 31%)
OKLCH
oklch(70.5% 0.035 64.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6771 0.6146 0.5496)
HSV
hsv(28, 22%, 69%)
LAB
lab(65.63% 4.42 12.12)
LCH
lch(65.63% 12.90 69.98)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 11%, 22%, 31%)

Etymology

Veiled
adjective

The past participle of veil, to cover — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as if seen through a thin layer of fabric or mist. Veiled pink, veiled lavender: low saturation combined with the optical haziness of a slight obstruction. Sits across the hushed and pale buckets alongside gauzy.

Sodiumlight
noun

The amber light produced by sodium-vapor street lamps — the dominant nighttime urban color from the 1950s through the early 2000s, before LED retrofits. The color refers to a sodium-lit suburban street at night: a saturated, slightly red-shifted deep amber with the slight monochromaticity of sodium-D-line emission.

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.

#b09c8a
Original
#a39d89
Protanopia
#a7a18a
Deuteranopia
#b79897
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
2.64:1
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
7.97:1

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
##B09C8A
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6771 0.6146 0.5496)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.035

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