Marbled Larch
Marbled Larch (#F2F7D7) is a soft yellow with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (69°, 67%, 91%) 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.
Etymology
Latin marmor, marble — past-participle of marble, sharing root with Greek mármaros. As a color modifier, marbled implies a pale-and-veined-and-irregularly-flowed quality, the pale color of Carrara-Italian-marble-and-Florentine-paper irregularly-veined-and-flowed natural-stone-and-decorative-paper surface-finish. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to veined and mottled in usage.
The genus Larix — deciduous conifers (uncommon among conifers) whose needles turn gold-yellow in autumn before falling. The European larch (L. decidua) and the western larch (L. occidentalis) are the dominant species. The color refers to a larch in peak autumn yellow: a saturated, slightly red-shifted gold-yellow with the matte finish of senescing needles.
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.