colors
Back to gallery

Filmy Amber

#bbb39c
Notes

Filmy Amber (#BBB39C) 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 (45°, 19%, 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 blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#bbb39c
RGB
rgb(187, 179, 156)
HSL
hsl(45, 19%, 67%)
HWB
hwb(45 61% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(76.7% 0.033 91.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7279 0.7030 0.6212)
HSV
hsv(45, 17%, 73%)
LAB
lab(73.03% -1.05 12.77)
LCH
lch(73.03% 12.82 94.71)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 4%, 17%, 27%)

Etymology

Filmy
adjective

Old English filmen, thin layer — adjectival suffix -y. As a color modifier, filmy implies a pale-and-thin-and-translucent quality, the pale color of Edwardian-period gauze-and-tulle wedding-veil-and-curtain thin-and-translucent textile surface. Sits at the pale-and-thin end of the grid, parallel to gauzy and sheer in usage.

Amber
noun

Fossilized tree resin — pine and conifer sap that flowed sixty million years ago and slowly polymerized in Baltic and Dominican forests. The color refers to a polished cabochon of true Baltic amber: a warm, slightly translucent gold-orange with the depth of resin and the occasional inclusion of trapped insects. Softer than honey, deeper than topaz, with the mineral light of a fossil that still feels organic.

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.

#bbb39c
Original
#b8b29b
Protanopia
#bbb49d
Deuteranopia
#c0afac
Tritanopia
#b3b3b3
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
2.09:1
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
10.04:1

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
##BBB39C
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7279 0.7030 0.6212)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.033

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.

Related Colors

Canvas