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Serene Whiskey

#c4a27a
Notes

Serene Whiskey (#C4A27A) is a true orange 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 (32°, 39%, 62%) 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
#c4a27a
RGB
rgb(196, 162, 122)
HSL
hsl(32, 39%, 62%)
HWB
hwb(32 48% 23%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.3% 0.067 71.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7472 0.6403 0.4986)
HSV
hsv(32, 38%, 77%)
LAB
lab(68.74% 6.92 25.51)
LCH
lch(68.74% 26.43 74.82)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 17%, 38%, 23%)

Etymology

Serene
adjective

Latin serēnus, clear / unclouded. As a color modifier, serene implies a clear-and-untroubled quality where the hue carries the visual register of cloudless-bright-day atmospheric stability. Sits at the crisp-and-calm end of the grid, parallel to placid and untroubled in usage.

Whiskey
noun

The distilled grain spirit — particularly Scotch, Irish, and American whiskies aged in oak barrels. The color refers to a 12-year-old single-malt Scotch in a glass: a soft, slightly red-shifted warm gold-brown with the optical clarity of barrel-aged spirit. Warmer than honey, drier than caramel.

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.

#c4a27a
Original
#aea377
Protanopia
#b6ab7b
Deuteranopia
#d09a97
Tritanopia
#a6a6a6
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
2.39:1
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
8.80:1

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
##C4A27A
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7472 0.6403 0.4986)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.067

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.

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