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Glancing Marzipan

#c9bda4
Notes

Glancing Marzipan (#C9BDA4) is a soft 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 (41°, 26%, 72%) places it in the muted 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 azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#c9bda4
RGB
rgb(201, 189, 164)
HSL
hsl(41, 26%, 72%)
HWB
hwb(41 64% 21%)
OKLCH
oklch(80.2% 0.037 85.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7802 0.7428 0.6537)
HSV
hsv(41, 18%, 79%)
LAB
lab(76.98% 0.12 14.17)
LCH
lch(76.98% 14.17 89.54)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 6%, 18%, 21%)

Etymology

Glancing
adjective

Old French glacier, to slide — present-participle of glance. As a color modifier, glancing implies a pale-and-side-and-tangential-touching quality where the hue carries the visual register of swordsman-and-archer side-touching-and-tangential glance-blow movement. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to skimming and brushing in usage.

Marzipan
noun

The almond-and-sugar paste used in European confectionery since at least the medieval period — central to Lübeck's confectionery tradition and the Italian frutta martorana of Sicilian Easter. The color refers to fresh marzipan paste: a soft, slightly warm pale yellow with the matte finish of almond-flour-and-sugar paste.

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.

#c9bda4
Original
#c3bca3
Protanopia
#c6bfa5
Deuteranopia
#d0b9b6
Tritanopia
#bebebe
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
1.86:1
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
11.30:1

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
##C9BDA4
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7802 0.7428 0.6537)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.037

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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