colors
Back to gallery

Hemmed Polenta

#c5a87b
Notes

Hemmed Polenta (#C5A87B) 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 (36°, 39%, 63%) 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
#c5a87b
RGB
rgb(197, 168, 123)
HSL
hsl(36, 39%, 63%)
HWB
hwb(36 48% 23%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.6% 0.069 78.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7540 0.6630 0.5045)
HSV
hsv(36, 38%, 77%)
LAB
lab(70.39% 4.20 27.19)
LCH
lch(70.39% 27.51 81.22)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 15%, 38%, 23%)

Etymology

Hemmed
adjective

Old English hem, border — past-participle of hem. As a color modifier, hemmed implies a clear-and-finished-and-bordered quality where the hue carries the visual register of carefully-hemmed-and-finished textile-edge. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to trim and finished in usage.

Polenta
noun

Italian cornmeal porridge — eaten across northern Italy as a staple grain since corn arrived from the Americas in the sixteenth century. The color refers to a fresh-cooked yellow polenta: a saturated, slightly red-shifted gold-yellow with the matte finish of cooked maize. Warmer than buttercup.

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.

#c5a87b
Original
#b4a878
Protanopia
#bbaf7c
Deuteranopia
#d1a09c
Tritanopia
#ababab
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
2.27:1
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
9.26:1

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
##C5A87B
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7540 0.6630 0.5045)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.069

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.

Related Colors

Canvas