colors
Back to gallery

Levitated Mocha

#cdbca5
Notes

Levitated Mocha (#CDBCA5) 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 (35°, 29%, 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
#cdbca5
RGB
rgb(205, 188, 165)
HSL
hsl(35, 29%, 73%)
HWB
hwb(35 65% 20%)
OKLCH
oklch(80.3% 0.037 75.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7926 0.7396 0.6572)
HSV
hsv(35, 20%, 80%)
LAB
lab(77.08% 2.29 13.83)
LCH
lch(77.08% 14.01 80.58)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 8%, 20%, 20%)

Etymology

Levitated
adjective

Latin levitās, lightness — past-participle of levitate. As a color modifier, levitated implies a pale-and-suspended-and-lifted quality where the hue carries the visual register of magic-trick-and-stage-illusion lifted-and-suspended-state spatial-condition. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to floating and buoyant in usage.

Mocha
noun

A variety of agate from the Yemeni port of al-Mukhā — characterized by tree-like dendritic inclusions in a yellow-tan ground. Also the Yemeni coffee that gave its name to the chocolate-coffee drink. The color refers to a polished mocha-agate cabochon: a soft, slightly muted warm tan with the matte finish of cryptocrystalline silica.

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.

#cdbca5
Original
#c3bca4
Protanopia
#c7c0a6
Deuteranopia
#d4b7b5
Tritanopia
#bebebe
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
1.85:1
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
11.33:1

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
##CDBCA5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7926 0.7396 0.6572)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.037

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