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Idyllic Stardust

#b8a59e
Notes

Idyllic Stardust (#B8A59E) is a true orange 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 (16°, 15%, 67%) 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 cyan. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#b8a59e
RGB
rgb(184, 165, 158)
HSL
hsl(16, 15%, 67%)
HWB
hwb(16 62% 28%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.6% 0.024 41.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7091 0.6497 0.6236)
HSV
hsv(16, 14%, 72%)
LAB
lab(69.16% 5.71 6.14)
LCH
lch(69.16% 8.39 47.06)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 10%, 14%, 28%)

Etymology

Idyllic
adjective

Greek eidúllion, little-poem — adjectival suffix -ic. As a color modifier, idyllic implies a neutral-and-pastoral-and-perfect-rural quality, the neutral color of Theocritus-and-Virgil-Eclogues idyllic-and-poetic-rural pastoral-mood color treatment. Sits at the neutral-and-traditional end of the grid, parallel to bucolic and pastoral in usage.

Stardust
noun

The micron-scale dust that fills interstellar space — primarily silicate and carbon grains, the seed material from which planets and people eventually condense. Stardust as a color refers to the metaphorical pale-gray-with-sparkle of a black-tie dressing-room mirror: a soft, very pale slightly cool gray with the optical complexity of an imagined material. Cooler than mist.

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.

#b8a59e
Original
#a9a79e
Protanopia
#aeaa9e
Deuteranopia
#bda2a3
Tritanopia
#a9a9a9
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
2.36:1
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
8.91:1

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
##B8A59E
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7091 0.6497 0.6236)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.024

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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