colors
Back to gallery

Welcoming Amber

#cbae7e
Notes

Welcoming Amber (#CBAE7E) 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 (37°, 43%, 65%) 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 azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#cbae7e
RGB
rgb(203, 174, 126)
HSL
hsl(37, 43%, 65%)
HWB
hwb(37 49% 20%)
OKLCH
oklch(76.5% 0.072 79.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7775 0.6865 0.5177)
HSV
hsv(37, 38%, 80%)
LAB
lab(72.55% 3.75 28.54)
LCH
lch(72.55% 28.79 82.52)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 14%, 38%, 20%)

Etymology

Welcoming
adjective

Old English wel-cuman, well-coming — present-participle of welcome. As a color modifier, welcoming implies a clear-and-inviting-and-warm quality where the hue carries the visual register of cordial-and-hospitable color-tone. Sits at the crisp-and-cheerful end of the grid, parallel to hospitable and inviting in usage.

Amber
noun

Fossilized tree resin — pine and conifer sap that flowed sixty million years ago and slowly polymerized in Baltic and Dominican forests. The color refers to a polished cabochon of true Baltic amber: a warm, slightly translucent gold-orange with the depth of resin and the occasional inclusion of trapped insects. Softer than honey, deeper than topaz, with the mineral light of a fossil that still feels organic.

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.

#cbae7e
Original
#baae7b
Protanopia
#c1b57f
Deuteranopia
#d7a5a2
Tritanopia
#b1b1b1
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
2.12:1
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
9.89:1

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
##CBAE7E
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7775 0.6865 0.5177)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.072

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.

Related Colors

Canvas