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Parchment quartz

#b5a0a8
Notes

Parchment quartz (#B5A0A8) is a true magenta 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 (337°, 12%, 67%) 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 teal. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#b5a0a8
RGB
rgb(181, 160, 168)
HSL
hsl(337, 12%, 67%)
HWB
hwb(337 63% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.6% 0.027 352.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6961 0.6304 0.6575)
HSV
hsv(337, 12%, 71%)
LAB
lab(67.87% 9.07 -1.33)
LCH
lch(67.87% 9.17 351.67)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 12%, 7%, 29%)

Etymology

Parchment
adjective

Old French parchemin, parchment — adjectival usage of parchment. As a color modifier, parchment implies a pale-and-aged-and-translucent quality, the pale color of medieval-and-Renaissance hand-prepared calfskin-and-goatskin parchment-and-vellum manuscript-paper surface-finish. Sits at the pale-and-thin end of the grid, parallel to vellum and glassine in usage.

quartz
noun

Silicon dioxide — the most abundant single mineral on Earth's continental crust, occurring as everything from beach sand to gem-grade rock crystal. Quartz as a color refers to a polished pale-gray quartz crystal: a soft, very pale slightly cool gray with the high specular shine of a translucent silicate. Cooler than pearl, warmer than mist.

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.

#b5a0a8
Original
#a2a3a8
Protanopia
#a6a7a8
Deuteranopia
#b99fa3
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
2.45:1
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
8.56:1

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
##B5A0A8
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6961 0.6304 0.6575)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.027

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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