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Steady Coltsfoot

#b28d58
Notes

Steady Coltsfoot (#B28D58) 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 (35°, 37%, 52%) 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 azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#b28d58
RGB
rgb(178, 141, 88)
HSL
hsl(35, 37%, 52%)
HWB
hwb(35 35% 30%)
OKLCH
oklch(66.6% 0.083 75.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6752 0.5586 0.3746)
HSV
hsv(35, 51%, 70%)
LAB
lab(60.98% 7.30 33.46)
LCH
lch(60.98% 34.25 77.69)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 21%, 51%, 30%)

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.

Coltsfoot
noun

Tussilago farfara, the European wildflower whose bright yellow composite blooms appear before the leaves in early spring — used as a herbal cough remedy since classical times. The color refers to a fresh coltsfoot in March: a saturated, slightly orange yellow with the matte finish of dandelion-form composite flower.

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.

#b28d58
Original
#9b8e54
Protanopia
#a49759
Deuteranopia
#bf8380
Tritanopia
#919191
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).
AA Largeon White
3.07:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon Black
6.84:1

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
##B28D58
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6752 0.5586 0.3746)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.083

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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