colors
Back to gallery

Whitened Apatite

#b7ac92
Notes

Whitened Apatite (#B7AC92) 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 (42°, 20%, 65%) 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
#b7ac92
RGB
rgb(183, 172, 146)
HSL
hsl(42, 20%, 65%)
HWB
hwb(42 57% 28%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.7% 0.038 87.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7102 0.6760 0.5835)
HSV
hsv(42, 20%, 72%)
LAB
lab(70.63% -0.37 14.81)
LCH
lch(70.63% 14.82 91.42)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 6%, 20%, 28%)

Etymology

Whitened
adjective

Old English hwītian, to whiten — past-participle of whiten. As a color modifier, whitened implies a pale-and-white-shifted-and-bleached quality, the pale color of Andalusian-village freshly-whitewashed-and-lime-painted village-architecture surface-finish. Sits at the pale-and-bleached end of the grid, parallel to bleached and blanched in usage.

Apatite
noun

A calcium phosphate mineral — known to mineralogists as the source rock for fertilizer and to gem traders as a yellow-to-green-to-blue gem. The yellow variety is mined principally in Madagascar and Brazil. The color refers to a faceted yellow apatite: a saturated, slightly cool yellow with the gem's signature internal warmth.

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.

#b7ac92
Original
#b2ab90
Protanopia
#b5ae93
Deuteranopia
#bda8a5
Tritanopia
#acacac
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
2.25:1
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
9.33:1

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
##B7AC92
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7102 0.6760 0.5835)
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

Canvas