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Pellucid Bistre

#b5967b
Notes

Pellucid Bistre (#B5967B) is a true orange 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 (28°, 28%, 60%) 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
#b5967b
RGB
rgb(181, 150, 123)
HSL
hsl(28, 28%, 60%)
HWB
hwb(28 48% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(69.4% 0.053 62.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6902 0.5928 0.4960)
HSV
hsv(28, 32%, 71%)
LAB
lab(64.22% 7.56 18.59)
LCH
lch(64.22% 20.07 67.86)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 17%, 32%, 29%)

Etymology

Pellucid
adjective

Latin pellūcidus, transparent — derived from per-lūcēre (to shine through). As a color modifier, pellucid implies a clear-and-translucent quality where the hue reads with optical clarity and minimal turbidity. Sits at the crisp-and-clear end of the grid, parallel to lucid and translucent in usage.

Bistre
noun

A traditional French painter's pigment made from soot suspended in gum arabic — used for sepia-style washes in Old Master drawings. The color refers to a bistre wash on Rembrandt-period drawing paper: a soft, slightly muted warm brown with the translucent finish of soot-and-binder. Cooler than walnut, drier than caramel.

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.

#b5967b
Original
#a09879
Protanopia
#a79e7b
Deuteranopia
#bf908f
Tritanopia
#9b9b9b
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
2.76:1
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
7.61:1

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
##B5967B
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6902 0.5928 0.4960)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.053

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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