Genuine Nettle
Genuine Nettle (#C4ECA0) is a soft lime with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (92°, 67%, 78%) places it in the balanced band at a light lightness. It works as a background wash, large-area fill, or soft illustration tone. Add a darker ink of the same hue when you need type over it. 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
Latin genuinus, natural, innate — used as a color modifier since the sixteenth century for hues that read as authentic rather than imitated. Genuine indigo, genuine ochre: moderate-to-high saturation combined with the optical impression of a hue from real pigment rather than synthetic dye. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside true and honest.
Urtica dioica, the European wild green whose stinging leaves are blanched and eaten as soup, tea, and herbal tonic — a traditional spring tonic across European folk medicine. The color refers to fresh young nettle tops: a saturated, slightly cool deep yellow-green with the matte finish of pubescent stinging-leaf surface.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
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.