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Plainspoken Daylight

#b4ad70
Notes

Plainspoken Daylight (#B4AD70) 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 (54°, 31%, 57%) 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
#b4ad70
RGB
rgb(180, 173, 112)
HSL
hsl(54, 31%, 57%)
HWB
hwb(54 44% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.9% 0.081 102.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7011 0.6794 0.4680)
HSV
hsv(54, 38%, 71%)
LAB
lab(70.01% -6.66 32.26)
LCH
lch(70.01% 32.94 101.67)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 4%, 38%, 29%)

Etymology

Plainspoken
adjective

English compound plain + spoken — past-participle of speak. As a color modifier, plainspoken implies a clear-and-direct-and-straightforward quality where the hue carries the visual register of unembellished-honest declaration. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to candid and direct in usage.

Daylight
noun

Diffuse light from the sun — including atmospheric scatter, cloud reflection, and ground-bounce. Daylight as a color refers to the warm pale yellow of diffuse light through a north-facing window at noon: a soft, slightly cool warm pale yellow with the optical balance of full-spectrum daylight.

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.

#b4ad70
Original
#b7a96c
Protanopia
#baad72
Deuteranopia
#bea59e
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
2.29:1
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
9.15:1

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
##B4AD70
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7011 0.6794 0.4680)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.081

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.

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