Tints & Shades
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Scale from white (50) through Blanched Almond (500) to black (900), interpolated in Lab color space.
Color Values
- HEX
- #FFEBCD
- RGB
- rgb(255, 235, 205)
- HSL
- hsl(36, 100%, 90%)
- OKLCH
- oklch(0.948 0.045 78)
- CMYK
- cmyk(0%, 8%, 20%, 0%)
--color-blanched-almondbg-[#FFEBCD]Accessibility
Score: 48/100On White (#FFF)
1.17:1
On Black (#000)
18.02:1
On Light Gray (#F5F5F5)
1.07:1
Best text color on this background:
Design Applications
background-color: #FFEBCD
color: #FFEBCD
bg-[#FFEBCD] text-[#000000]
border-left: 4px solid #FFEBCD
Color Harmonies
Similar Colors
Color Meaning & Psychology
Brown is the color of earth, wood, and food — the most organic color in the spectrum. It conveys honesty, dependability, and unpretentiousness. Unlike the engineered precision of black, brown's warmth feels handmade and authentic. Coffee culture has made brown aspirational in ways it never was in the 20th century; the smell and warmth of a coffee shop is inseparable from its brown palette. Darker, richer browns signal luxury craft — leather, walnut, dark chocolate. Lighter sandy browns feel outdoor, regional, and approachable. Brown's weakness is its association with dirt and decay in medical contexts, where it is largely avoided. As a very light tint, it carries the lightness and openness of its hue family while remaining gentle enough for backgrounds, subtle highlights, and delicate UI elements.
Industry Usage
Common contexts and industries where Blanched Almond is applied in professional design.
- Coffee shops and specialty beverage brands
- Chocolate and premium confectionery
- Outdoor gear and hiking equipment
- Furniture and home furnishing brands
- Craft beer and artisanal food products
- Leather goods and accessories
- Organic and natural food products
- Heritage and classic whiskey/spirits brands
Accessibility Considerations
Normal Text
Fails AA
4.5:1 minimum required
Large Text
Fails AA Large
3:1 minimum required
UI Components
Check contrast
3:1 for non-text UI
Blanched Almond is a light color. Use black (#000000) text on top of it for maximum readability (18.02:1). Avoid white text on this background.
CSS & Code Examples
Background
background-color: #FFEBCD;Text
color: #FFEBCD;Border
border: 2px solid #FFEBCD;Box Shadow
box-shadow: 0 4px 20px #FFEBCD40;Gradient
background: linear-gradient(135deg, #FFEBCD, #ffffff);Tailwind-style
--color-blanched-almond: #FFEBCD;Tailwind CSS Utilities
Use arbitrary value syntax in Tailwind CSS to apply Blanched Almond without a custom config.
Background
bg-[#FFEBCD]Text
text-[#FFEBCD]Border
border-[#FFEBCD]Ring
ring-[#FFEBCD]Fill
fill-[#FFEBCD]From (gradient)
from-[#FFEBCD]Via (gradient)
via-[#FFEBCD]To (gradient)
to-[#FFEBCD]Design Tokens
Ready-to-use Blanched Almond design token in CSS custom properties, SCSS, Tailwind v3/v4, and JSON formats.
CSS Custom Properties
:root {
--color-blanched-almond: #FFEBCD;
--color-blanched-almond-rgb: 255, 235, 205;
--color-blanched-almond-hsl: 36, 100%, 90%;
}SCSS Variables
$color-blanched-almond: #FFEBCD; $color-blanched-almond-rgb: 255, 235, 205; $color-blanched-almond-hsl: 36, 100%, 90%;
Tailwind v3 Config
// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
theme: {
extend: {
colors: {
'blanched-almond': '#FFEBCD',
},
},
},
};Tailwind v4 (@theme)
/* tailwind.css */
@theme {
--color-blanched-almond: #FFEBCD;
}JSON Design Token (W3C format)
{
"blanched-almond": {
"value": "#FFEBCD",
"type": "color",
"description": "Blanched Almond — #FFEBCD"
}
}More brown colors
View all →What Does Blanched Almond Mean? Color Psychology & Cultural Symbolism
Blanched Almond at #FFEBCD carries the heritage of the materials that shaped human civilization: earth, wood, leather, stone, coffee, chocolate. This material memory translates directly as authenticity—an instinctive trust in things that feel honestly made.
- Brown carries the associations of the earth, wood, leather, and the materials of pre-industrial life—a grounding quality that contemporary branding leverages for authenticity, craft, and natural origin. Its associations with coffee, chocolate, and wood make it an instinctive choice for artisanal food and lifestyle brands.
- Across Asian cultures, brown tones—particularly warm earthy reds and ochres—appear extensively in traditional architecture, ceramics, and clothing. Earth tones are universally associated with stability and natural order, and brown occupies this role across most of the world's cultural traditions.
- Blanched Almond's pale lightness (90%) shifts its psychological register: Tan, beige, and light khaki are neutral-warm tones that function almost as warm whites—versatile, timeless, and excellent as background colors in earthy design systems.
- At 100% saturation, Blanched Almond reads as vivid—Richer, more saturated terracottas and warm siennas carry a Mediterranean, artisanal energy—earthy but vibrant, associated with ceramic crafts and sun-baked landscapes.
Blanched Almond asks for trust without performance—and that quiet confidence is its greatest design asset.
How to Use Blanched Almond in Design: Applications, Pairings & Best Practices
Blanched Almond is one of design's most underused versatile tones. It works as a neutral, an accent, a dominant brand color, and a sophisticated alternative to black—and it brings a warmth to palettes that no other color family delivers.
- UI components: warm accent colors, earthy neutral backgrounds, natural brand accents—Blanched Almond performs reliably in all these roles with its pale tonal character.
- Brand & identity: coffee and chocolate brands, craft beer packaging, outdoor gear—contexts where Blanched Almond's vivid quality creates the right register.
- Typography: Blanched Almond as text requires a dark background; its 90% lightness means it provides 1.2:1 contrast on white, not meeting WCAG AA.
- Blanched Almond creates strong legibility with black text overlays (18.0:1 contrast ratio), making it a reliable background or surface color in design systems
- Proportional use: Blanched Almond's vivid saturation (100%) means small applications—accents, highlights, icons—deliver maximum impact without visual fatigue. Reserve large-scale use for intentional brand moments.
Blanched Almond asks for trust without performance—and that quiet confidence is its greatest design asset.
Blanched Almond Accessibility: WCAG Contrast Ratios, Color Blindness & Inclusive Design
Blanched Almond (#FFEBCD) achieves a 18.02:1 contrast ratio with black text, surpassing the WCAG 2.1 AAA threshold of 7:1. This exceptional contrast qualifies it for body text, UI components at any size, and all accessibility-sensitive interface contexts. Relative luminance: 85.1%.
- As text on white (#FFFFFF): 1.17:1 — Fail
- As text on black (#000000): 18.02:1 — AAA ✓
- Best text color on Blanched Almond background: Black (#000000) at 18.02:1
- WCAG 2.1 luminance: 85.1% — high-luminance (near-white)—it provides excellent readability for dark text overlays and integrates naturally into light design systems
- Blanched Almond qualifies for all text sizes including small body copy (AAA).
- Color blindness consideration: protanopia and deuteranopia (red-green color blindness, ~8% of males) may affect how brown-family colors are distinguished from greens and browns. For critical UI states, supplement color alone with shape, label, or pattern cues.
Always verify Blanched Almond at its final intended size and weight using a real contrast checker—font weight and rendering environment affect perceived legibility beyond what raw ratios capture.
Blanched Almond in Industry: Branding, Design & Market Applications
Blanched Almond's brand positioning falls squarely in the territory of earthiness, stability, warmth, and authenticity. Industry data supports its strongest performance in food & beverage, outdoor & lifestyle, coffee categories, where the vivid saturation calibrates the message at a pale, considered level.
- Food & Beverage: Brown's associations with coffee, chocolate, bread, and wood-fire cooking make it indispensable for food brands that want to project artisanal quality, warmth, and natural origin. The color does the work of suggesting handmade, slow-craft processes before a single word is read. (examples: Chipotle, Sweetgreen, Blue Bottle Coffee) Light browns work for dairy and bakery; dark browns for coffee, chocolate, and premium spirits.
- Outdoor & Lifestyle: Outdoor, hiking, and adventure brands use brown as an earth tone that grounds the product in natural environments. Combined with forest greens and slate grays, it creates a palette language of terrain, durability, and wilderness competence. (examples: REI, Patagonia, Arc'teryx) Brown leather and canvas associations make it particularly effective for gear, footwear, and heritage outdoor brands.
- Craft & Artisanal: The craft movement across food, beer, candles, and home goods has made brown its unofficial color—it signals hand-made, small-batch, locally-sourced, and premium-for-a-reason. Any product that wants to claim artisanal credentials benefits from earthy, brown-anchored packaging. Kraft paper brown in particular has become synonymous with sustainable, artisanal packaging.
- Brand positioning: Blanched Almond is best suited for brands projecting naturalness, warmth, reliability. Categories outside this positioning—technology products—tend to see weaker results.
- Adjacent applications: Beyond primary industries, Blanched Almond works effectively in artisanal food, furniture and home goods, natural product labels—contexts where earthiness serves a secondary but reinforcing role.
For marketers and brand strategists, Blanched Almond is a commitment to earthiness, stability, warmth, and authenticity. Match it with industries that make that promise and it will pay dividends consistently.
Accessibility & Design Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the hex code for Blanched Almond? ▾
- The hex code for Blanched Almond is #FFEBCD. Its RGB values are rgb(255, 235, 205) and its HSL values are hsl(36, 100%, 90%).
- What does Blanched Almond mean in design? ▾
- Brown is the color of earth, wood, and food — the most organic color in the spectrum. It conveys honesty, dependability, and unpretentiousness. Unlike the engineered precision of black, brown's warmth feels handmade and authentic. Coffee culture has made brown aspirational in ways it never was in the 20th century; the smell and warmth of a coffee shop is inseparable from its brown palette. Darker, richer browns signal luxury craft — leather, walnut, dark chocolate. Lighter sandy browns feel outdoor, regional, and approachable. Brown's weakness is its association with dirt and decay in medical contexts, where it is largely avoided. As a very light tint, it carries the lightness and openness of its hue family while remaining gentle enough for backgrounds, subtle highlights, and delicate UI elements.
- Is Blanched Almond WCAG accessible? ▾
- Blanched Almond (#FFEBCD) does not pass WCAG AA on white (1.17:1 ratio). Use it on dark backgrounds where it achieves 18.02:1. Its overall accessibility score is 48/100.
- What colors go well with Blanched Almond? ▾
- Blanched Almond pairs well with its complementary color Glaucous (#6082B6). Analogous colors like Licorice and Sorbet also work harmoniously. Check the Color Harmonies section above for the full palette.
- What is Blanched Almond used for? ▾
- Blanched Almond is commonly used for: Coffee shops and specialty beverage brands; Chocolate and premium confectionery; Outdoor gear and hiking equipment; Furniture and home furnishing brands; Craft beer and artisanal food products.
- What are the CSS and Tailwind values for Blanched Almond? ▾
- In CSS, use `color: #FFEBCD` or `background-color: #FFEBCD`. The CSS custom property is `--color-blanched-almond: #FFEBCD`. In Tailwind CSS, use the arbitrary value class `bg-[#FFEBCD]` for backgrounds or `text-[#FFEBCD]` for text.