Beeswax

#e9d7ab

A yellow that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is very light — it works as a page background, not as text.

Hex

#e9d7ab

RGB

233, 215, 171

OKLCh

88.3% 0.061 88.4°

CIELAB (D50)

86.7, 1.5, 24.2

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 28 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it — this part of the space is crowded, and the names here are finer distinctions than most people make.
  • It uses 43% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 20.3; on black, Lc -83.1. 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 6.8 and 6.8 and 19.0 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.42:1 — fails AA

Black text

14.77:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at14.77:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#86754c 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

#e9d7ab

protanopia

#d9d9ab · ΔE00 6.8

deuteranopia

#dcdcaa · ΔE00 6.8

tritanopia

#e0e000 · ΔE00 19.0

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isGolden Fleece at ΔE00 1.032: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.

  • Golden FleeceΔE00 1.032 · #edd9aa
  • ShortcakeΔE00 1.065 · #eedaac
  • BakeliteΔE00 1.073 · #e6d4a5
  • Subtle GlowΔE00 1.085 · #ebd7a7
  • Caramelised PearsΔE00 1.15 · #e7d5ad
  • Canary IslandΔE00 1.314 · #e9d4a9
  • Cider YellowΔE00 1.32 · #e7d6af
  • VinaigretteΔE00 1.363 · #efdaae
  • SidecarΔE00 1.404 · #e9d9a9
  • Anise BiscottiΔE00 1.441 · #e5d5ae
  • Paper MoonΔE00 1.485 · #ead4a6
  • SandbankΔE00 1.517 · #e9d5ad

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