colors
Back to gallery

Aglow Honey

#c9a333
Notes

Aglow Honey (#C9A333) 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 (45°, 60%, 49%) 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.

HEX
#c9a333
RGB
rgb(201, 163, 51)
HSL
hsl(45, 60%, 49%)
HWB
hwb(45 20% 21%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.1% 0.132 89.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7645 0.6449 0.2863)
HSV
hsv(45, 75%, 79%)
LAB
lab(68.64% 2.80 59.99)
LCH
lch(68.64% 60.06 87.33)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 19%, 75%, 21%)

Etymology

Aglow
adjective

Old English on-glōwan, on-glow — sharing root with glow and gleam. As a color modifier, aglow implies a saturated-and-lit-from-within quality, the bright color of fireplace-and-jack-o-lantern interior-glow-lit warm-light emission against ambient darkness. Sits at the bright-and-warm end of the grid, parallel to glowing and aflame in usage.

Honey
noun

The product of bees concentrating floral nectar in the hive — a near-saturated solution of fructose and glucose, with trace minerals and pollen that color the final pour from clear gold to deep amber. The color refers to a mid-grade clover or wildflower honey: a warm, slightly translucent gold-orange that catches light through a glass jar. Old English hunig, from the same Indo-European root that gives us gold.

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.

#c9a333
Original
#b6a121
Protanopia
#bfac39
Deuteranopia
#da958d
Tritanopia
#a3a3a3
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
8.77:1

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
##C9A333
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7645 0.6449 0.2863)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.132

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.

Related Colors

Canvas