colors
Back to gallery

Iced Wheat

#b3ae99
Notes

Iced Wheat (#B3AE99) 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 (48°, 15%, 65%) 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 blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#b3ae99
RGB
rgb(179, 174, 153)
HSL
hsl(48, 15%, 65%)
HWB
hwb(48 60% 30%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.9% 0.030 96.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6985 0.6830 0.6084)
HSV
hsv(48, 15%, 70%)
LAB
lab(70.98% -1.86 11.43)
LCH
lch(70.98% 11.58 99.23)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 3%, 15%, 30%)

Etymology

Iced
adjective

The past participle of ice — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues with the optical brightness of a thin layer of frozen water. Iced blue, iced pink: very low saturation combined with the slight cool shift of low-temperature surfaces. Sits at the pale-bucket alongside frosted.

Wheat
noun

Triticum, the grass domesticated in the Levant ten thousand years ago and now grown on more land than any other crop. The color refers to a field of mature wheat just before harvest: a soft, slightly golden tan with the dry surface of ripening grain. Warmer than straw, lighter than honey, with the agricultural weight of every bread-eating civilization.

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.

#b3ae99
Original
#b3ad98
Protanopia
#b4af9a
Deuteranopia
#b8aba8
Tritanopia
#aeaeae
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
2.23:1
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
9.43:1

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
##B3AE99
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6985 0.6830 0.6084)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.030

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.

Related Colors

Canvas