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Aligned Forsythia

#dcdb85
Notes

Aligned Forsythia (#DCDB85) is a true yellow 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 (59°, 55%, 69%) 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 blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#dcdb85
RGB
rgb(220, 219, 133)
HSL
hsl(59, 55%, 69%)
HWB
hwb(59 52% 14%)
OKLCH
oklch(87.3% 0.108 107.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.8621 0.8590 0.5630)
HSV
hsv(59, 40%, 86%)
LAB
lab(85.79% -12.04 42.37)
LCH
lch(85.79% 44.05 105.87)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 0%, 40%, 14%)

Etymology

Aligned
adjective

French à-ligne, to-line-up — past-participle of align. As a color modifier, aligned implies a clear-and-axis-coordinated quality where the hue carries the visual register of carefully-parallel-arranged elements. Sits at the crisp-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to symmetrical and squared in usage.

Forsythia
noun

Forsythia × intermedia, the East Asian shrub naturalized in European gardens — and the bright yellow flowers that cover bare branches in early spring before the leaves emerge. The color refers to a fresh Forsythia bloom in March: a saturated, slightly red-shifted bright yellow with the matte finish of small four-petaled flowers covering an entire shrub.

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.

#dcdb85
Original
#e8d57e
Protanopia
#ead889
Deuteranopia
#e7d1c6
Tritanopia
#d5d5d5
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
1.45:1
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
14.51:1

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
##DCDB85
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.8621 0.8590 0.5630)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.108

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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