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Basic Snowberry

#f6f3eb
Notes

Basic Snowberry (#F6F3EB) is a soft amber with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (44°, 38%, 94%) 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 azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#f6f3eb
RGB
rgb(246, 243, 235)
HSL
hsl(44, 38%, 94%)
HWB
hwb(44 92% 4%)
OKLCH
oklch(96.4% 0.011 89.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.9626 0.9533 0.9246)
HSV
hsv(44, 4%, 96%)
LAB
lab(95.87% -0.38 4.20)
LCH
lch(95.87% 4.22 95.13)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 1%, 4%, 4%)

Etymology

Basic
adjective

Greek básis, base / step — adjectival suffix -ic. As a color modifier, basic implies a neutral-and-fundamental-and-uncomplicated quality where the hue carries the visual register of Bauhaus-and-Mondrian-De-Stijl fundamental-and-base-color uncomplicated-essential-element. Sits at the neutral-and-foundational end of the grid, parallel to fundamental and foundational in usage.

Snowberry
noun

Symphoricarpos albus — a Caprifoliaceae deciduous shrub of North-American-and-Eurasian woodland-edge habitats, with iconic pure-white pearly drupes that persist through winter on bare branches. Snowberry color refers to a fully ripened Symphoricarpos albus drupe-cluster on a December-Cotswold hedgerow: a pure white with the velvet finish of pearly hand-collected pure-white drupes against bare deciduous-shrub branches.

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

This color has effectively no chroma (OKLCH C = 0.011) — it’s on the grayscale axis. Hue rotations don’t change a grayscale color, so complementary, analogous, triadic, and split-complementary all reduce to the same value. They aren’t shown because four identical tiles would be misleading.

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.

#f6f3eb
Original
#f5f3eb
Protanopia
#f6f3eb
Deuteranopia
#f8f2f1
Tritanopia
#f3f3f3
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
1.11:1
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
18.94:1

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
##F6F3EB
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.9626 0.9533 0.9246)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.011

This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.

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