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Glancing Hazel

#b8a98a
Notes

Glancing Hazel (#B8A98A) 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 (40°, 24%, 63%) 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
#b8a98a
RGB
rgb(184, 169, 138)
HSL
hsl(40, 24%, 63%)
HWB
hwb(40 54% 28%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.9% 0.046 85.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7116 0.6648 0.5548)
HSV
hsv(40, 25%, 72%)
LAB
lab(69.76% 0.45 17.99)
LCH
lch(69.76% 18.00 88.55)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 8%, 25%, 28%)

Etymology

Glancing
adjective

Old French glacier, to slide — present-participle of glance. As a color modifier, glancing implies a pale-and-side-and-tangential-touching quality where the hue carries the visual register of swordsman-and-archer side-touching-and-tangential glance-blow movement. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to skimming and brushing in usage.

Hazel
noun

The tree Corylus avellana and its nut, but as a color name hazel refers most often to the human eye — an iris that combines low pigment with light scatter to produce a warm, slightly amber gold-brown. Also the flexible wood used for medieval coppice work and divining rods. The color is the cross-section of a hazelnut: a soft tan with the slight warmth of dried plant tissue.

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.

#b8a98a
Original
#b1a888
Protanopia
#b5ac8b
Deuteranopia
#c0a4a0
Tritanopia
#aaaaaa
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
2.31:1
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
9.08:1

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
##B8A98A
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7116 0.6648 0.5548)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.046

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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