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Chilled Whiskey

#c9bfaa
Notes

Chilled Whiskey (#C9BFAA) 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°, 22%, 73%) 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
#c9bfaa
RGB
rgb(201, 191, 170)
HSL
hsl(41, 22%, 73%)
HWB
hwb(41 67% 21%)
OKLCH
oklch(80.7% 0.031 85.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7815 0.7504 0.6754)
HSV
hsv(41, 15%, 79%)
LAB
lab(77.63% -0.01 11.86)
LCH
lch(77.63% 11.86 90.06)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 5%, 15%, 21%)

Etymology

Chilled
adjective

Old English cele, cold — past-participle of chill. As a color modifier, chilled implies a pale-and-cool-and-cool-shifted quality, the pale color of Champagne-and-Prosecco properly-chilled-and-iced-bucket effervescent-wine cool-temperature presentation. Sits at the pale-and-cool end of the grid, parallel to frosty and cool in usage.

Whiskey
noun

The distilled grain spirit — particularly Scotch, Irish, and American whiskies aged in oak barrels. The color refers to a 12-year-old single-malt Scotch in a glass: a soft, slightly red-shifted warm gold-brown with the optical clarity of barrel-aged spirit. Warmer than honey, drier than caramel.

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.

#c9bfaa
Original
#c4bea9
Protanopia
#c7c1ab
Deuteranopia
#cfbbb9
Tritanopia
#c0c0c0
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
1.82:1
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
11.52:1

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
##C9BFAA
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7815 0.7504 0.6754)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.031

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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