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Glancing Oak

#b3a993
Notes

Glancing Oak (#B3A993) 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 (41°, 17%, 64%) 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
#b3a993
RGB
rgb(179, 169, 147)
HSL
hsl(41, 17%, 64%)
HWB
hwb(41 58% 30%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.7% 0.033 86.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6952 0.6641 0.5857)
HSV
hsv(41, 18%, 70%)
LAB
lab(69.52% -0.12 12.66)
LCH
lch(69.52% 12.66 90.55)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 6%, 18%, 30%)

Etymology

Glancing
adjective

Old French glacier, to slide — present-participle of glance. As a color modifier, glancing implies a pale-and-side-and-tangential-touching quality where the hue carries the visual register of swordsman-and-archer side-touching-and-tangential glance-blow movement. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to skimming and brushing in usage.

Oak
noun

The genus Quercus — and the warm tan of European white-oak heartwood used in the parquet floors, wine barrels, and pew pews of pre-industrial European architecture. The color refers to a freshly cut English oak board: a soft, slightly muted warm tan with the slightly grainy surface of medullary-ray-rich hardwood.

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.

#b3a993
Original
#afa892
Protanopia
#b1ab94
Deuteranopia
#b9a5a3
Tritanopia
#aaaaaa
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
2.33:1
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
9.01:1

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
##B3A993
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6952 0.6641 0.5857)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.033

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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