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Indigenous Whiting

#b3a6a5
Notes

Indigenous Whiting (#B3A6A5) is a true red 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 (4°, 8%, 67%) 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 cyan. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#b3a6a5
RGB
rgb(179, 166, 165)
HSL
hsl(4, 8%, 67%)
HWB
hwb(4 65% 30%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.6% 0.015 22.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6933 0.6528 0.6483)
HSV
hsv(4, 8%, 70%)
LAB
lab(69.16% 4.51 2.21)
LCH
lch(69.16% 5.02 26.08)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 7%, 8%, 30%)

Etymology

Indigenous
adjective

Latin indigena, native-born — adjectival suffix -ous. As a color modifier, indigenous implies a neutral-and-native-and-traditional quality, the neutral color of Indigenous-and-First-Nations hand-built-and-tradition-rooted ceremonial-craft pottery-and-textile-and-totem surface-finish. Sits at the neutral-and-traditional end of the grid, parallel to native and aboriginal in usage.

Whiting
noun

English whiting, chalk-powder — the cool-pale-gray-white finely-ground calcium-carbonate powder used in pre-modern European whitewash-and-paint manufacture. Whiting color refers to a freshly applied whiting-and-glue gesso ground on a Northern-Renaissance oak-panel: a pale cool gray with the matte finish of Cretaceous-period chalk-powder-and-rabbit-skin-glue painting-ground on hand-prepared oak-panel substrate.

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.

#b3a6a5
Original
#a8a7a5
Protanopia
#abaaa5
Deuteranopia
#b6a5a6
Tritanopia
#a9a9a9
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
2.36:1
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
8.91:1

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
##B3A6A5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6933 0.6528 0.6483)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.015

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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