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Sterile Floret

#b4ba6f
Notes

Sterile Floret (#B4BA6F) is a true yellow 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 (65°, 35%, 58%) 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
#b4ba6f
RGB
rgb(180, 186, 111)
HSL
hsl(65, 35%, 58%)
HWB
hwb(65 44% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(76.7% 0.098 112.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7101 0.7286 0.4709)
HSV
hsv(65, 40%, 73%)
LAB
lab(73.53% -13.55 37.28)
LCH
lch(73.53% 39.66 109.97)
CMYK
cmyk(3%, 0%, 40%, 27%)

Etymology

Sterile
adjective

Latin sterilis, barren / not-fertile — sharing root with Greek steiros (barren). As a color modifier, sterile implies a clear-and-medical-clean-and-stripped quality, the crisp color of operating-theater surgical-environment white-and-stainless-steel surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to sanitary and hygienic in usage.

Floret
noun

A small individual flower in a clustered inflorescence — particularly the small yellow florets of composite-family flowers (sunflower, daisy, calendula). The color refers to a single sunflower floret: a saturated, slightly red yellow with the matte finish of small disc-floret. Brighter than corn.

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.

#b4ba6f
Original
#c4b469
Protanopia
#c4b672
Deuteranopia
#bdb2a8
Tritanopia
#b3b3b3
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
2.06:1
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
10.19:1

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
##B4BA6F
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7101 0.7286 0.4709)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.098

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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