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Fresh Mead

#b3a252
Notes

Fresh Mead (#B3A252) 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 (49°, 39%, 51%) 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
#b3a252
RGB
rgb(179, 162, 82)
HSL
hsl(49, 39%, 51%)
HWB
hwb(49 32% 30%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.0% 0.103 97.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6907 0.6377 0.3667)
HSV
hsv(49, 54%, 70%)
LAB
lab(66.55% -4.26 43.35)
LCH
lch(66.55% 43.55 95.61)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 9%, 54%, 30%)

Etymology

Fresh
adjective

Old English fersc, unsalted / not stale — sharing root with German frisch. As a color modifier, fresh implies a clear-and-newly-applied quality where the hue carries the just-emerged visual register. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to crisp and new in usage.

Mead
noun

Honey wine — fermented honey-and-water, one of the oldest known alcoholic beverages, central to Norse and Anglo-Saxon halls. The color refers to a young Polish miód pitny: a soft, slightly cool warm gold-yellow with the optical clarity of honey-derived alcohol. Warmer than champagne, lighter than whiskey.

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.

#b3a252
Original
#b09e4b
Protanopia
#b4a455
Deuteranopia
#bf9890
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
2.56:1
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
8.21:1

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
##B3A252
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6907 0.6377 0.3667)
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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