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Drawn Sage

#cdf9a5
Notes

Drawn Sage (#CDF9A5) is a soft lime with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (91°, 88%, 81%) places it in the highly saturated band at a light lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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
#cdf9a5
RGB
rgb(205, 249, 165)
HSL
hsl(91, 88%, 81%)
HWB
hwb(91 65% 2%)
OKLCH
oklch(93.1% 0.118 130.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.8380 0.9714 0.6811)
HSV
hsv(91, 34%, 98%)
LAB
lab(93.21% -28.32 35.84)
LCH
lch(93.21% 45.67 128.32)
CMYK
cmyk(18%, 0%, 34%, 2%)

Etymology

Drawn
adjective

Old English dragan, to draw — past-participle of draw. As a color modifier, drawn implies a clear-and-line-and-mark quality, the crisp color of Old-Master-and-Modernist hand-drawn studio-and-life-class observational-drawing graphite-and-charcoal lines. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to etched and drafted in usage.

Sage
noun

Salvia officinalis, the Mediterranean kitchen herb whose silvery-green leaves give the color its name. The Latin salvia shares a root with salvuswhole, healthy — for the herb's medieval reputation as a panacea. The color refers to dried sage leaves rubbed for stuffing: a soft, slightly gray-green that's cooler than olive and warmer than mint, with the matte finish of leaf hair under a hand lens.

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.

#cdf9a5
Original
#ffee9f
Protanopia
#faeaa9
Deuteranopia
#cff2e4
Tritanopia
#eaeaea
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
1.19:1
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
17.69:1

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
##CDF9A5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.8380 0.9714 0.6811)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.118

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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