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Pressed Buttercup

#b7a957
Notes

Pressed Buttercup (#B7A957) 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 (51°, 40%, 53%) places it in the balanced 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
#b7a957
RGB
rgb(183, 169, 87)
HSL
hsl(51, 40%, 53%)
HWB
hwb(51 34% 28%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.9% 0.105 99.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7083 0.6647 0.3865)
HSV
hsv(51, 52%, 72%)
LAB
lab(68.85% -5.85 43.68)
LCH
lch(68.85% 44.07 97.63)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 8%, 52%, 28%)

Etymology

Pressed
adjective

Latin pressāre, to press — past-participle of press. As a color modifier, pressed implies a clear-and-smoothed-and-flattened quality, the crisp color of Mid-Century-Modern freshly-pressed-shirt-and-trouser ironed-textile finish. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to ironed and starched in usage.

Buttercup
noun

Ranunculus acris and its meadow cousins — the small, glossy yellow flowers of European pastures whose petals reflect ultraviolet light to attract bees. The color refers to a buttercup petal in full sun: a saturated, slightly cool yellow with the polished finish of an epidermis that scatters light like wet paint. The folk test for whether you like butter — holding the flower under your chin to catch its yellow reflection — works on every variety.

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.

#b7a957
Original
#b6a550
Protanopia
#baaa5b
Deuteranopia
#c39f96
Tritanopia
#a6a6a6
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
2.38:1
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
8.83:1

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
##B7A957
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7083 0.6647 0.3865)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.105

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

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