Ostentatious Cassia
Ostentatious Cassia (#C5A522) is a true amber with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (48°, 71%, 45%) 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 blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin ostentātiōnis, display — adjectival suffix -ous, derived from ostendere (to show). As a color modifier, ostentatious implies a saturated-and-attention-demanding-and-elaborate quality, the bright color of Belle-Époque-and-Gilded-Age showy-luxury-display interior-decoration. Sits at the bright-and-flamboyant end of the grid, parallel to flamboyant and showy in usage.
Cassia fistula, the South Asian flowering tree (also called golden shower tree) whose long pendulous racemes of yellow flowers cover the canopy in early summer — Thailand's national flower. Distinct from Cinnamomum cassia, the spice. The color refers to a Cassia fistula inflorescence in May: a saturated, slightly green-shifted yellow with the satin finish of pea-family florets.
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.