Glowing Sunflower
Glowing Sunflower (#FCC621) is a true amber with a neon character. It sits at the high-saturation edge of its family. Use it sparingly, as signage, accent, or highlight against darker surfaces. Its HSL profile (45°, 97%, 56%) 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 blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
The progressive participle of glow, to emit light — used as a color word since the medieval period for hues that read as if they were luminous from within. Glowing amber, glowing rose: the implication is moderate saturation combined with the optical impression of internal light. Sits in the bright-bucket alongside radiant.
Helianthus annuus, the North American annual whose ray florets follow the sun across the sky during the early bud stage and then settle east-facing once mature. The color refers to a fully open sunflower's ray petals: a saturated, slightly orange-shifted yellow with the satiny finish of bee-pollinated bloom. Van Gogh's signature yellow, the unifying color of a Tuscan field, the cover crop of a Ukrainian summer.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
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.