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Veiled Sodiumlight

#b5ae93
Notes

Veiled Sodiumlight (#B5AE93) is a true amber 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 (48°, 19%, 64%) 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 blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#b5ae93
RGB
rgb(181, 174, 147)
HSL
hsl(48, 19%, 64%)
HWB
hwb(48 58% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.9% 0.038 95.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7050 0.6833 0.5875)
HSV
hsv(48, 19%, 71%)
LAB
lab(71.01% -2.05 14.78)
LCH
lch(71.01% 14.92 97.90)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 4%, 19%, 29%)

Etymology

Veiled
adjective

The past participle of veil, to cover — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as if seen through a thin layer of fabric or mist. Veiled pink, veiled lavender: low saturation combined with the optical haziness of a slight obstruction. Sits across the hushed and pale buckets alongside gauzy.

Sodiumlight
noun

The amber light produced by sodium-vapor street lamps — the dominant nighttime urban color from the 1950s through the early 2000s, before LED retrofits. The color refers to a sodium-lit suburban street at night: a saturated, slightly red-shifted deep amber with the slight monochromaticity of sodium-D-line emission.

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.

#b5ae93
Original
#b4ac91
Protanopia
#b6af94
Deuteranopia
#bbaaa6
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
2.22:1
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
9.44:1

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
##B5AE93
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7050 0.6833 0.5875)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.038

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.

Related Colors

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