North Star

#f2dea4

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

#f2dea4

RGB

242, 222, 164

OKLCh

90.3% 0.078 91.3°

CIELAB (D50)

89.1, 0.9, 31.2

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 33 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 60% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 16.4; on black, Lc -87.3. 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 6.4 and 6.5 and 16.8 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.33:1 — fails AA

Black text

15.76:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at15.76:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#88753e 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

#f2dea4

protanopia

#e0e0a4 · ΔE00 6.4

deuteranopia

#e4e4a3 · ΔE00 6.5

tritanopia

#e8e800 · ΔE00 16.8

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isHoney Nectar at ΔE00 0.324: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Honey NectarΔE00 0.324 · #f1dda2
  • Gold StrandΔE00 0.325 · #f3dfa6
  • Roadster YellowΔE00 0.482 · #f3dea2
  • Mella YellaΔE00 0.505 · #f0dda2
  • Hazy MoonΔE00 0.544 · #f1dca1
  • Sun DeckΔE00 0.646 · #f0dca0
  • Angelic YellowΔE00 0.668 · #f4dfa7
  • Optimistic YellowΔE00 0.684 · #f5e1a6
  • Sun DustΔE00 0.849 · #f6e0a4
  • Cutlery PolishΔE00 1.139 · #f4dda5
  • VisionaryΔE00 1.174 · #f6e0a9
  • Open SesameΔE00 1.219 · #f8e2a9

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