Desert

#ccad60

A yellow that is muted. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.

Hex

#ccad60

RGB

204, 173, 96

OKLCh

75.9% 0.103 88.0°

CIELAB (D50)

72.3, 4.6, 43.5

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 6 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses 66% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 42.4; on black, Lc -59.8. The sign is the polarity, which the WCAG ratio discards.
  • Built into an eleven-step scale, 10 of the 10 adjacent pairs stay ΔE00 2 apart — see the ramp.
  • protanopia and deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 9.6 and 9.7 and 13.4 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.16:1 — fails AA

Black text

9.71:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at9.71:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#907321 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.

Try it against your own background

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#ccad60

protanopia

#b1b160 · ΔE00 9.6

deuteranopia

#b7b75e · ΔE00 9.7

tritanopia

#bdbd00 · ΔE00 13.4

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isFiltered Rays at ΔE00 0.968: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Filtered RaysΔE00 0.968 · #d0b064
  • Hay WainΔE00 1.159 · #cdad59
  • LaserΔE00 1.361 · #c6a95e
  • Glorious GoldΔE00 1.546 · #cba956
  • Golden BlondΔE00 1.603 · #ccaa55
  • Hedgehog Cactus Yellow GreenΔE00 1.861 · #c4aa5e
  • Dylan VelvetΔE00 2.025 · #d5b266
  • Tanami DesertΔE00 2.026 · #d0b25c
  • Sell GoldΔE00 2.088 · #d4ae5e
  • Ginger CrunchΔE00 2.307 · #ceaa64
  • Canadian MapleΔE00 2.325 · #cab266
  • TanΔE00 2.408 · #d1b26f

11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.