Lively Mace Goldenrod
Lively Mace Goldenrod (#DBA41F) is a true amber with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (42°, 75%, 49%) 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.
Etymology
An adjectival form of life — used as a color word since the seventeenth century for hues that read as energetic. Lively coral, lively chartreuse: the implication is saturation combined with optical liveliness, the slight visual restlessness of a color that feels animated. Sits at the bright-bucket center.
Latin macir, outer-aril-of-nutmeg. As a color modifier, mace implies a Banda-Islands-aril-and-orange-red-spice quality, the visual register of Banda-Islands-and-Spice-Islands-mace hand-Banda-Islands-aril-and-orange-red-spice Banda-Islands-and-Spice-Islands-mace-and-Maluku-aril mace-and-Banda-Islands-aril surfaces under Banda-Islands-and-Spice-Islands-mace-and-Maluku-aril Banda-Islands-and-Run-and-Maluku Spice-Islands-aril-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to nutmeg and clove in usage.
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 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.
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.