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Easy Ochre

#f9c665
Notes

Easy Ochre (#F9C665) 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 (39°, 93%, 69%) 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.

HEX
#f9c665
RGB
rgb(249, 198, 101)
HSL
hsl(39, 93%, 69%)
HWB
hwb(39 40% 2%)
OKLCH
oklch(85.3% 0.128 81.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.9450 0.7842 0.4560)
HSV
hsv(39, 59%, 98%)
LAB
lab(82.63% 7.59 54.63)
LCH
lch(82.63% 55.16 82.09)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 20%, 59%, 2%)

Etymology

Easy
adjective

Old French aisié, comfortable, at rest — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as visually undemanding. Easy beige, easy gray: moderate saturation combined with optical restfulness. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside calm and settled.

Ochre
noun

Iron-rich earth pigment — humanity's oldest known coloring material, used in burial ornament 100,000 years ago. Yellow ochre is the unfired earth (limonite); red ochre is the same mineral fired or weathered to hematite. The color refers to yellow ochre as ground for Renaissance fresco: a warm, slightly muted earth-yellow with the matte chalk finish of mineral pigment. Cave paintings in Lascaux and Altamira; the unbroken thread of Western image-making.

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

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.

#f9c665
Original
#dbc65c
Protanopia
#e8d368
Deuteranopia
#ffb6b0
Tritanopia
#cacaca
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
1.58:1
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
13.29:1

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
##F9C665
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.9450 0.7842 0.4560)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.128

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

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