Acid Sand
Acid Sand (#F3C85C) is a true 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 (43°, 86%, 66%) 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 azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin acidus, sour — sharing root with English acrid and acerbic. As a color modifier, acid implies a saturated-and-citric-and-zingy quality, the bright color of lemon-and-lime citrus-fruit-flesh and acid-yellow fluorescent-pigment surfaces. Sits at the bright-and-cool end of the grid, parallel to acidic and electric in usage.
Quartz weathered to grain — the residue of geologic time at the granular scale. Beach sand color depends entirely on the source: white from Caribbean coral, black from Hawaiian basalt, red from Australian iron oxide. The reference shade is the warm, slightly golden tan of a temperate Atlantic beach: medium-saturation, matte, with the optical brightness of small mineral particles in sunlight.
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.