colors
Back to gallery

Fresh Mahogany

#fdd99f
Notes

Fresh Mahogany (#FDD99F) 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 (37°, 96%, 81%) places it in the highly saturated band at a light 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
#fdd99f
RGB
rgb(253, 217, 159)
HSL
hsl(37, 96%, 81%)
HWB
hwb(37 62% 1%)
OKLCH
oklch(90.2% 0.084 79.3)
HSV
hsv(37, 37%, 99%)
LAB
lab(88.45% 4.67 33.23)
LCH
lch(88.45% 33.55 82.00)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 14%, 37%, 1%)

Etymology

Fresh
adjective

Old English fersc, unsalted / not stale — sharing root with German frisch. As a color modifier, fresh implies a clear-and-newly-applied quality where the hue carries the just-emerged visual register. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to crisp and new in usage.

Mahogany
noun

The genus Swietenia — particularly S. macrophylla, the South and Central American hardwood prized since the eighteenth century for furniture and ship building. The color refers to a freshly polished Honduras mahogany table: a deep, slightly red-shifted dark brown with the satin finish of high-density tropical hardwood.

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.

#fdd99f
Original
#e8d99b
Protanopia
#f1e2a1
Deuteranopia
#ffceca
Tritanopia
#dcdcdc
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
1.35:1
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
15.60:1

Related Colors

Canvas