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Patterned Spelt

#b3a787
Notes

Patterned Spelt (#B3A787) 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 (44°, 22%, 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
#b3a787
RGB
rgb(179, 167, 135)
HSL
hsl(44, 22%, 62%)
HWB
hwb(44 53% 30%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.0% 0.046 89.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6939 0.6565 0.5433)
HSV
hsv(44, 25%, 70%)
LAB
lab(68.73% -0.85 18.15)
LCH
lch(68.73% 18.17 92.69)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 7%, 25%, 30%)

Etymology

Patterned
adjective

Old French patron, pattern / model — past-participle of pattern. As a color modifier, patterned implies a pale-and-repeating-design-and-structured quality, the pale color of William-Morris-and-Liberty-of-London hand-block-printed-and-repeated decorative-and-structured pattern-design surface. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to marbled and figured in usage.

Spelt
noun

Triticum spelta, the ancient wheat species cultivated in Europe since the Bronze Age — slowly returning to artisan baking after a century of displacement by modern wheat. The color refers to a fresh-baked spelt loaf: a soft, slightly muted warm tan with the slightly nuttier finish of ancient-grain flour.

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.

#b3a787
Original
#aea685
Protanopia
#b2a988
Deuteranopia
#baa29e
Tritanopia
#a7a7a7
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
2.39:1
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
8.79:1

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
##B3A787
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6939 0.6565 0.5433)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.046

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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