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Laconic Chemise

#fdfff9
Notes

Laconic Chemise (#FDFFF9) is a soft lime with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (80°, 100%, 99%) 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 indigo. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#fdfff9
RGB
rgb(253, 255, 249)
HSL
hsl(80, 100%, 99%)
HWB
hwb(80 98% 0%)
OKLCH
oklch(99.7% 0.008 121.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.9936 0.9997 0.9785)
HSV
hsv(80, 2%, 100%)
LAB
lab(99.71% -1.70 2.63)
LCH
lch(99.71% 3.13 122.92)
CMYK
cmyk(1%, 0%, 2%, 0%)

Etymology

Laconic
adjective

Greek Lakonikós, of-Lacedaemon — adjectival suffix -ic, referring to the Spartan-Lacedaemonian terse-and-restrained speech-style. As a color modifier, laconic implies a neutral-and-terse-and-unembellished quality, the neutral color of Spartan-and-Stoic-school unembellished-and-terse-formal color-decision. Sits at the neutral-and-quiet end of the grid, parallel to taciturn and reticent in usage.

Chemise
noun

French chemise, shirt — the pure-cream-pure-white-and-pale-cream fine-cotton-or-linen-undergarment-fabric of pre-modern European-and-American chemise-and-undergarment tradition, particularly the Empire-period chemise-à-la-grecque sleeveless white-cotton dress. Chemise color refers to a freshly bleached Edwardian-period chemise on a Connecticut-laundry-line in raking afternoon-summer-light: a pure white with the matte finish of cotton-or-linen-bleached-and-cold-rinse hand-laundered chemise-fabric.

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 = 0.008) — 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.

#fdfff9
Original
#fffef9
Protanopia
#fffef9
Deuteranopia
#fefefd
Tritanopia
#fefefe
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
1.01:1
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
20.85:1

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
##FDFFF9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.9936 0.9997 0.9785)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.008

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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