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Fine quartz

#b5a4ba
Notes

Fine quartz (#B5A4BA) is a true violet with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (286°, 14%, 69%) 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 green. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#b5a4ba
RGB
rgb(181, 164, 186)
HSL
hsl(286, 14%, 69%)
HWB
hwb(286 64% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.0% 0.036 318.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6986 0.6455 0.7233)
HSV
hsv(286, 12%, 73%)
LAB
lab(69.41% 10.23 -9.05)
LCH
lch(69.41% 13.65 318.50)
CMYK
cmyk(3%, 12%, 0%, 27%)

Etymology

Fine
adjective

Old French fin, fine / refined — sharing root with Latin fīnis (end). As a color modifier, fine implies a pale-and-precisely-detailed-and-refined quality where the hue carries the visual register of Sèvres-and-Meissen fine-bone-china porcelain finely-detailed surface. Sits at the pale-and-delicate end of the grid, parallel to delicate and filigree 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.

#b5a4ba
Original
#a2a8bb
Protanopia
#a5aab9
Deuteranopia
#b5a6ab
Tritanopia
#a9a9a9
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
2.34:1
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
8.98:1

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
##B5A4BA
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6986 0.6455 0.7233)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.036

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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