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Loud Indochina

#b9b51d
Notes

Loud Indochina (#B9B51D) is a true yellow with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (58°, 73%, 42%) 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
#b9b51d
RGB
rgb(185, 181, 29)
HSL
hsl(58, 73%, 42%)
HWB
hwb(58 11% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.2% 0.156 108.0)
HSV
hsv(58, 84%, 73%)
LAB
lab(71.86% -14.44 69.09)
LCH
lch(71.86% 70.58 101.80)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 2%, 84%, 27%)

Etymology

Loud
adjective

Old English hlūd, making noise — borrowed metaphorically as a color word since the nineteenth century. Loud red, loud yellow: a color so saturated it announces itself without needing surrounding context. Sits in the bright-bucket extreme alongside electric and striking. Carries a slightly pejorative implication of excess.

Indochina
noun

The historical name for mainland Southeast Asia — Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. Indochina as a color refers to the warm yellow of Cambodian and Vietnamese rice paddies in late autumn: a saturated, slightly red-shifted gold-yellow with the matte finish of ripening grain across an entire landscape.

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

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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.

#b9b51d
Original
#c5ad00
Protanopia
#c7b22d
Deuteranopia
#c7a89b
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
2.17:1
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
9.69:1

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