Buttoned Sail Topaz
Buttoned Sail Topaz (#D9B999) is a soft orange 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 (30°, 46%, 73%) places it in the balanced 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.
Etymology
Old French bouton, button — past-participle of button. As a color modifier, buttoned implies a clear-and-fastened-and-formal quality, the crisp color of Edwardian-period formal-attire fully-fastened-and-formally-dressed gentleman's-attire. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to trim and pressed in usage.
Old English segl, sail. As a color modifier, sail implies a wind-filled-canvas-cloth quality, the visual register of Tall-Ship-and-Royal-Navy-Sail hand-stitched wind-filled-canvas-and-flax-sail tall-ship-and-frigate maritime-rigging surfaces under wind-filled tall-ship-sail-and-canvas maritime light. Sits at the modifier-and-nautical end of the grid, parallel to mast and sheet in usage.
A fluorine aluminum silicate gem, hardness 8 on the Mohs scale, mined for centuries in Ouro Preto, Brazil. Imperial topaz is the prized variety: a warm, slightly pink-shifted gold-orange with the high refractive index of a quality cut stone. Cooler than amber, brighter than honey, with the gem's signature internal fire when held to light. Named for the island of Topazos in the Red Sea, though that source produced peridot instead.
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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
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.