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Hot Forsythia

#badf74
Notes

Hot Forsythia (#BADF74) is a true lime with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (81°, 63%, 66%) 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 indigo. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#badf74
RGB
rgb(186, 223, 116)
HSL
hsl(81, 63%, 66%)
HWB
hwb(81 45% 13%)
OKLCH
oklch(85.4% 0.141 125.0)
HSV
hsv(81, 48%, 87%)
LAB
lab(84.21% -28.89 48.16)
LCH
lch(84.21% 56.16 120.96)
CMYK
cmyk(17%, 0%, 48%, 13%)

Etymology

Hot
adjective

Old English hāt, of high temperature — applied metaphorically to color since the eighteenth century for warm hues at high saturation. Hot pink, hot red: the implication is luminous intensity combined with thermal warmth. Sits in the bright-and-warm corner of the grid, alongside burning and vivid.

Forsythia
noun

Forsythia × intermedia, the East Asian shrub naturalized in European gardens — and the bright yellow flowers that cover bare branches in early spring before the leaves emerge. The color refers to a fresh Forsythia bloom in March: a saturated, slightly red-shifted bright yellow with the matte finish of small four-petaled flowers covering an entire shrub.

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.

#badf74
Original
#e9d36b
Protanopia
#e4d27a
Deuteranopia
#c0d6c6
Tritanopia
#cfcfcf
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
1.51:1
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
13.90:1

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