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Stoical Conch

#b9a8a1
Notes

Stoical Conch (#B9A8A1) 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 (18°, 15%, 68%) 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
#b9a8a1
RGB
rgb(185, 168, 161)
HSL
hsl(18, 15%, 68%)
HWB
hwb(18 63% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.4% 0.022 43.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7142 0.6612 0.6352)
HSV
hsv(18, 13%, 73%)
LAB
lab(70.10% 4.95 5.84)
LCH
lch(70.10% 7.65 49.75)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 9%, 13%, 27%)

Etymology

Stoical
adjective

Greek stōikós, of-the-Stoa — adjectival suffix -al. As a color modifier, stoical implies a neutral-and-restrained-and-unaffected quality, the neutral color of Stoic-philosophical and Spartan-school unaffected-and-stripped-down formal-but-unaffected color-decision. Sits at the neutral-and-restrained end of the grid, parallel to stoic and reserved in usage.

Conch
noun

Caribbean Lobatus gigas (queen conch) — a Strombidae marine-snail with characteristic pale-cream-and-pale-pink-and-pale-gray glossy shell-interior, used in pre-modern Caribbean-and-Bahamian conch-shell food-and-tool tradition. Conch color refers to a freshly cleaned Lobatus gigas shell-interior in raking sun: a pale cool gray with the iridescent satin finish of aragonite-nacre layered structurally colored conch-shell mantle.

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.

#b9a8a1
Original
#aca9a1
Protanopia
#b0ada1
Deuteranopia
#bea6a6
Tritanopia
#ababab
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
2.29:1
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
9.18:1

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
##B9A8A1
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7142 0.6612 0.6352)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.022

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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