colors
Back to gallery

Steady Hardal

#b4a862
Notes

Steady Hardal (#B4A862) 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 (51°, 35%, 55%) 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
#b4a862
RGB
rgb(180, 168, 98)
HSL
hsl(51, 35%, 55%)
HWB
hwb(51 38% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.6% 0.092 99.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6978 0.6605 0.4200)
HSV
hsv(51, 46%, 71%)
LAB
lab(68.45% -5.54 37.59)
LCH
lch(68.45% 37.99 98.39)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 7%, 46%, 29%)

Etymology

Steady
adjective

Old English stede, place, position — drifted to mean firm and unmoving. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as reliable rather than dramatic. Steady gray, steady green: moderate saturation combined with optical calmness. Sits in the crisp-bucket center alongside settled.

Hardal
noun

The Turkish word for mustard — used both for the condiment and the slightly muted gold-yellow of the hardal sauces of Anatolian kitchens. The color refers to a fresh-mixed hardal paste: a saturated, slightly muted gold-yellow with the dusty finish of mustard-seed powder. The Turkish cousin of mustard.

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.

#b4a862
Original
#b4a45c
Protanopia
#b8a965
Deuteranopia
#bf9f97
Tritanopia
#a5a5a5
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
2.41:1
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
8.72:1

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
##B4A862
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6978 0.6605 0.4200)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.092

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.

Related Colors

Canvas