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Surveyed Marzipan

#c28b2c
Notes

Surveyed Marzipan (#C28B2C) 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 (38°, 63%, 47%) 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 azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#c28b2c
RGB
rgb(194, 139, 44)
HSL
hsl(38, 63%, 47%)
HWB
hwb(38 17% 24%)
OKLCH
oklch(67.5% 0.126 76.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7284 0.5540 0.2499)
HSV
hsv(38, 77%, 76%)
LAB
lab(61.76% 12.45 55.84)
LCH
lch(61.76% 57.21 77.43)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 28%, 77%, 24%)

Etymology

Surveyed
adjective

Old French surveer, to look upon — past-participle of survey. As a color modifier, surveyed implies a clear-and-measured-and-coordinated quality, the crisp color of Mason-Dixon-Line-and-Royal-Navy-Hydrographic scientific-and-cadastral land-and-sea surveying tradition. Sits at the crisp-and-mapped end of the grid, parallel to mapped and plotted in usage.

Marzipan
noun

The almond-and-sugar paste used in European confectionery since at least the medieval period — central to Lübeck's confectionery tradition and the Italian frutta martorana of Sicilian Easter. The color refers to fresh marzipan paste: a soft, slightly warm pale yellow with the matte finish of almond-flour-and-sugar paste.

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.

#c28b2c
Original
#9f8d1d
Protanopia
#ac9b30
Deuteranopia
#d37c78
Tritanopia
#909090
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
2.99:1
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
7.02:1

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
##C28B2C
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7284 0.5540 0.2499)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.126

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

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