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Taciturn Brocade

#b5abb8
Notes

Taciturn Brocade (#B5ABB8) 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°, 8%, 70%) 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
#b5abb8
RGB
rgb(181, 171, 184)
HSL
hsl(286, 8%, 70%)
HWB
hwb(286 67% 28%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.4% 0.021 318.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7030 0.6719 0.7178)
HSV
hsv(286, 7%, 72%)
LAB
lab(71.15% 5.99 -5.36)
LCH
lch(71.15% 8.04 318.18)
CMYK
cmyk(2%, 7%, 0%, 28%)

Etymology

Taciturn
adjective

Latin taciturnus, silent / not-given-to-speech. As a color modifier, taciturn implies a neutral-and-quiet-and-not-talkative quality where the hue carries the visual register of Cistercian-monastic and Quaker-meeting-house silent-and-meditative interior-and-textile-finish. Sits at the neutral-and-quiet end of the grid, parallel to reticent and laconic in usage.

Brocade
noun

Italian broccato, embossed — the pale-cool-pale-gray-and-cream jacquard-loomed-silk of pre-modern Italian-and-French-textile manufacture, particularly the Lyon-and-Florence brocade-weave tradition. Brocade color refers to a freshly hand-jacquard-loomed Lyon-period brocade in raking light: a pale cool gray with the silky finish of multi-warp-and-multi-weft hand-jacquard-loomed silk-and-metallic-thread blended-fabric.

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.

#b5abb8
Original
#aaaeb9
Protanopia
#acafb8
Deuteranopia
#b5acaf
Tritanopia
#aeaeae
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
2.21:1
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
9.48:1

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
##B5ABB8
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7030 0.6719 0.7178)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.021

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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