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Holographic Mead

#cba434
Notes

Holographic Mead (#CBA434) 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°, 59%, 50%) 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
#cba434
RGB
rgb(203, 164, 52)
HSL
hsl(45, 59%, 50%)
HWB
hwb(45 20% 20%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.5% 0.133 88.8)
HSV
hsv(45, 74%, 80%)
LAB
lab(69.11% 3.18 60.13)
LCH
lch(69.11% 60.21 86.97)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 19%, 74%, 20%)

Etymology

Holographic
adjective

Greek hólos (whole) and graphé (writing) — adjectival suffix -ic. As a color modifier, holographic implies a saturated-and-multi-angle-shifting quality, the bright color of holographic-credit-card and trading-card dichroic-film 3D-image-reflection. Sits at the bright-and-shifting end of the grid, parallel to iridescent and prismatic in usage.

Mead
noun

Honey wine — fermented honey-and-water, one of the oldest known alcoholic beverages, central to Norse and Anglo-Saxon halls. The color refers to a young Polish miód pitny: a soft, slightly cool warm gold-yellow with the optical clarity of honey-derived alcohol. Warmer than champagne, lighter than whiskey.

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.

#cba434
Original
#b7a222
Protanopia
#c1ad3a
Deuteranopia
#dc968e
Tritanopia
#a4a4a4
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
2.36:1
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
8.90:1

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