Sharp Wax Goldenrod
Sharp Wax Goldenrod (#DC9E24) 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 (40°, 72%, 50%) 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
Old English scearp, cutting, pointed — applied metaphorically to color since the seventeenth century for hues that read as definite and edge-defined. Sharp red, sharp green: the implication is saturation combined with high-contrast crispness. Sits in the bright-bucket center alongside crisp and clear, with a slightly more incisive edge.
Old English weax, beeswax. As a color modifier, wax implies a translucent-and-warm quality, the visual register of beeswax-and-paraffin hand-rolled-and-poured candle-and-wax-tablet beeswax-and-paraffin candle-and-wax-tablet surfaces under candlelit-beeswax-and-paraffin warm-glow. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to waxen and honey 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.