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Charged Deneb Goldenrod

#cdbb3f
Notes

Charged Deneb Goldenrod (#CDBB3F) 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 (52°, 59%, 53%) 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
#cdbb3f
RGB
rgb(205, 187, 63)
HSL
hsl(52, 59%, 53%)
HWB
hwb(52 25% 20%)
OKLCH
oklch(78.5% 0.141 100.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7920 0.7358 0.3348)
HSV
hsv(52, 69%, 80%)
LAB
lab(75.38% -7.53 62.12)
LCH
lch(75.38% 62.57 96.91)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 9%, 69%, 20%)

Etymology

Charged
adjective

Old French chargier, to load — past-participle of charge, sharing root with cargo. As a color modifier, charged implies a saturated-and-electrically-loaded quality where the hue carries visual potential-energy. Sits at the bright-and-active end of the grid, parallel to electrified and energetic in usage.

Deneb
modifier

Arabic dhanab-al-dajājah, tail-of-the-hen. As a color modifier, deneb implies a Cygnus-tail-and-summer-triangle quality, the visual register of Cygnus-Swan-and-Summer-Triangle-Deneb hand-Cygnus-tail-and-summer-triangle Cygnus-Swan-and-Summer-Triangle-and-Bortle-1-sky deneb-and-Cygnus-tail-and-summer-triangle surfaces under Cygnus-Swan-and-Summer-Triangle-and-Bortle-1-sky July-and-August-summer-vista white-supergiant-stellar-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to vega and altair in usage.

Goldenrod
noun

Solidago, the late-summer wildflower of North American meadows whose tall sprays of small yellow flowers signal the end of the growing season. The color refers to the flower head at full bloom: a warm, slightly muted yellow-orange with the matte finish of small clustered florets. Cooler than mustard, deeper than dandelion. The state flower of Kentucky and Nebraska, a pollinator magnet, and the original native dye for early American homespun.

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.

#cdbb3f
Original
#ccb62d
Protanopia
#d1bd47
Deuteranopia
#ddaea2
Tritanopia
#b6b6b6
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
1.95:1
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
10.78:1

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
##CDBB3F
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7920 0.7358 0.3348)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.141

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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