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Fiery Yellowtail

#c9e278
Notes

Fiery Yellowtail (#C9E278) is a true yellow 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 (74°, 65%, 68%) 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 indigo. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#c9e278
RGB
rgb(201, 226, 120)
HSL
hsl(74, 65%, 68%)
HWB
hwb(74 47% 11%)
OKLCH
oklch(87.2% 0.135 120.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.8068 0.8832 0.5231)
HSV
hsv(74, 47%, 89%)
LAB
lab(86.09% -24.21 48.77)
LCH
lch(86.09% 54.45 116.40)
CMYK
cmyk(11%, 0%, 47%, 11%)

Etymology

Fiery
adjective

Old English fȳr, fire — adjectival suffix -y. As a color modifier, fiery implies a saturated-and-bright-flaming quality, the bright color of autumn-foliage fall-color and forge-furnace hot-iron emission. Sits at the bright-and-warm end of the grid, parallel to flaming and blazing in usage.

Yellowtail
noun

Seriola lalandi, the Pacific yellowtail amberjack — a sport fish prized in Japanese sushi cuisine as hamachi. The color refers to the yellow stripe along the lateral line: a saturated, slightly cool yellow with the matte finish of carotenoid-pigmented fish skin. Cooler than goldfinch.

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.

#c9e278
Original
#eed86f
Protanopia
#ead87e
Deuteranopia
#d2d8c9
Tritanopia
#d5d5d5
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
1.44:1
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
14.63:1

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
##C9E278
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.8068 0.8832 0.5231)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.135

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.

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