Quickening Toffee
Quickening Toffee (#EBD362) 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 (49°, 77%, 65%) places it in the highly saturated band at a mid lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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.
Etymology
Old English cwic, living / lively — present-participle of quicken. As a color modifier, quickening implies a saturated-and-coming-alive-and-active quality where the hue accelerates visual engagement. Sits at the bright-and-active end of the grid, parallel to animated and invigorating in usage.
Sugar boiled with butter past the hard-crack stage — a confection that emerged in nineteenth-century England as cheap industrial sugar made the technique affordable. The color refers to a slab of mid-cook English toffee just before it sets: a warm, golden-brown that's deeper than caramel and lighter than chocolate, with the slight translucency of cooked sugar before cooling.
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.