Sunlit Saffron
Sunlit Saffron (#C3E373) 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 (77°, 67%, 67%) 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.
Etymology
Old English sunne (sun) plus past-participle līehted. As a color modifier, sunlit implies a saturated-and-direct-sunlight-illuminated quality, the bright color of southern-Mediterranean and Greek-island afternoon-sun direct-illumination surface emission. Sits at the bright-and-warm end of the grid, parallel to radiant and brilliant in usage.
The dried stigmas of Crocus sativus, harvested by hand from autumn-flowering corms — about 150 flowers yield a single gram of finished spice. Cultivated in Iran, Kashmir, and Spain since antiquity, saffron has dyed Buddhist robes, perfumed Persian rice, and tinted Renaissance paintings. The color is the deep red-orange of fresh threads in hot water: warmer than amber, brighter than rust, with the unmistakable golden-red of the world's most expensive pigment by weight.
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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.