Parchment Quetzal
Parchment Quetzal (#EBFDDF) is a soft lime with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (96°, 88%, 93%) places it in the highly saturated band at a light 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 indigo. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old French parchemin, parchment — adjectival usage of parchment. As a color modifier, parchment implies a pale-and-aged-and-translucent quality, the pale color of medieval-and-Renaissance hand-prepared calfskin-and-goatskin parchment-and-vellum manuscript-paper surface-finish. Sits at the pale-and-thin end of the grid, parallel to vellum and glassine in usage.
Pharomachrus mocinno, the Resplendent Quetzal of Central American cloud forests — the sacred bird of the Maya and Aztec, whose iridescent green tail feathers crowned royal headdresses. The color refers to a male quetzal's tail feather: a saturated, slightly cool deep green with the iridescent satin finish of structurally colored feathers.
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.