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Plain Snowdrop

#b6b1a9
Notes

Plain Snowdrop (#B6B1A9) 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 (37°, 8%, 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 azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#b6b1a9
RGB
rgb(182, 177, 169)
HSL
hsl(37, 8%, 69%)
HWB
hwb(37 66% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(76.2% 0.013 79.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7103 0.6948 0.6660)
HSV
hsv(37, 7%, 71%)
LAB
lab(72.40% 0.34 4.72)
LCH
lch(72.40% 4.73 85.91)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 3%, 7%, 29%)

Etymology

Plain
adjective

Latin planus, flat, level — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as undecorated and direct. Plain white, plain blue: moderate saturation, no shift, no surface effect. Sits in the crisp-bucket center, with the implication of restraint rather than absence.

Snowdrop
noun

Eurasian Galanthus nivalis — an Amaryllidaceae small bulb-perennial of late-winter-and-early-spring deciduous-forest-floor blooming, with iconic pale-cool-pale-gray-and-white pendulous bell-shaped flowers. Snowdrop color refers to a fully bloomed Galanthus nivalis in early-February snowfall: a pale cool gray with the velvet finish of fresh three-tepalled white-pendulous bell-flower against late-winter snow-covered forest-floor.

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

This color has effectively no chroma (OKLCH C = 0.013) — it’s on the grayscale axis. Hue rotations don’t change a grayscale color, so complementary, analogous, triadic, and split-complementary all reduce to the same value. They aren’t shown because four identical tiles would be misleading.

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.

#b6b1a9
Original
#b3b1a9
Protanopia
#b5b2a9
Deuteranopia
#b9afaf
Tritanopia
#b1b1b1
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
2.13:1
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
9.85:1

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
##B6B1A9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7103 0.6948 0.6660)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.013

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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