colors
Back to gallery

Balanced Yolk

#e7db8e
Notes

Balanced Yolk (#E7DB8E) is a soft amber 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 (52°, 65%, 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 blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#e7db8e
RGB
rgb(231, 219, 142)
HSL
hsl(52, 65%, 73%)
HWB
hwb(52 56% 9%)
OKLCH
oklch(88.4% 0.098 100.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.8978 0.8604 0.5937)
HSV
hsv(52, 39%, 91%)
LAB
lab(86.80% -6.78 39.34)
LCH
lch(86.80% 39.92 99.77)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 5%, 39%, 9%)

Etymology

Balanced
adjective

The past participle of balance, to weigh evenly. Used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as neither overcommitted nor restrained. Balanced sage, balanced taupe: moderate saturation combined with optical equilibrium. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside even.

Yolk
noun

The yellow center of a chicken egg — colored by carotenoid pigments in the hen's feed, ranging from pale lemon (commercial barn-raised) to deep orange (pasture-raised, marigold-supplemented). The color refers to a fresh free-range yolk against the white: a saturated, slightly orange-shifted yellow with the satiny surface of a vitellus membrane. Warmer than canary, deeper than sunflower; the unifying yellow of breakfast.

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.

#e7db8e
Original
#e9d688
Protanopia
#ecdc91
Deuteranopia
#f4d1c8
Tritanopia
#d8d8d8
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
1.41:1
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
14.92:1

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
##E7DB8E
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.8978 0.8604 0.5937)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.098

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.

Related Colors

Canvas