Tints & Shades
50
100
200
300
400
500
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800
900
Scale from white (50) through Khaki (500) to black (900), interpolated in Lab color space.
Color Values
- HEX
- #C3B091
- RGB
- rgb(195, 176, 145)
- HSL
- hsl(37, 29%, 67%)
- OKLCH
- oklch(0.765 0.048 80)
- CMYK
- cmyk(0%, 10%, 26%, 24%)
--color-khaki-brownbg-[#C3B091]Accessibility
Score: 48/100On White (#FFF)
2.11:1
On Black (#000)
9.94:1
On Light Gray (#F5F5F5)
1.94:1
Best text color on this background:
Design Applications
background-color: #C3B091
color: #C3B091
bg-[#C3B091] text-[#000000]
border-left: 4px solid #C3B091
Color Harmonies
Complementary
Sapphire
#0F52BA
Split-Complementary
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. Its lighter value makes it approachable and soft — suitable for backgrounds, secondary UI states, and contexts requiring the hue's character without full intensity.
Industry Usage
Common contexts and industries where Khaki 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
Khaki is a light color. Use black (#000000) text on top of it for maximum readability (9.94:1). Avoid white text on this background.
CSS & Code Examples
Background
background-color: #C3B091;Text
color: #C3B091;Border
border: 2px solid #C3B091;Box Shadow
box-shadow: 0 4px 20px #C3B09140;Gradient
background: linear-gradient(135deg, #C3B091, #f6e2c1);Tailwind-style
--color-khaki: #C3B091;Tailwind CSS Utilities
Use arbitrary value syntax in Tailwind CSS to apply Khaki without a custom config.
Background
bg-[#C3B091]Text
text-[#C3B091]Border
border-[#C3B091]Ring
ring-[#C3B091]Fill
fill-[#C3B091]From (gradient)
from-[#C3B091]Via (gradient)
via-[#C3B091]To (gradient)
to-[#C3B091]Design Tokens
Ready-to-use Khaki design token in CSS custom properties, SCSS, Tailwind v3/v4, and JSON formats.
CSS Custom Properties
:root {
--color-khaki-brown: #C3B091;
--color-khaki-brown-rgb: 195, 176, 145;
--color-khaki-brown-hsl: 37, 29%, 67%;
}SCSS Variables
$color-khaki-brown: #C3B091; $color-khaki-brown-rgb: 195, 176, 145; $color-khaki-brown-hsl: 37, 29%, 67%;
Tailwind v3 Config
// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
theme: {
extend: {
colors: {
'khaki-brown': '#C3B091',
},
},
},
};Tailwind v4 (@theme)
/* tailwind.css */
@theme {
--color-khaki-brown: #C3B091;
}JSON Design Token (W3C format)
{
"khaki-brown": {
"value": "#C3B091",
"type": "color",
"description": "Khaki — #C3B091"
}
}Related Palettes & Combinations
Color Combinations
More brown colors
View all →What Does Khaki Mean? Color Psychology & Cultural Symbolism
Khaki (#C3B091) speaks the visual language of earth—the color of soil, wood, leather, and the raw materials of making. Brown-family tones project warmth through an ancient, universal association with the physical world: solid, reliable, and honestly crafted.
- Across color psychology research, brown consistently tests high for "authenticity" associations, making Khaki a reliable vehicle for warmth in cross-demographic audiences.
- Brand designers draw on brown-family tones to project naturalness and warmth—values that Khaki communicates in a mid-tone key.
- At 29% saturation, Khaki reads as muted—Muted taupes and pale warms are some of design's most universally usable neutrals—background-perfect, unthreatening, and inherently warm without competing with other palette elements.
- Khaki's mid-tone lightness (67%) 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.
The brands that use Khaki well are the ones that understand that authenticity can't be faked—it can only be matched by colors that embody it.
How to Use Khaki in Design: Applications, Pairings & Best Practices
Brands reaching for authenticity and craft frequently choose Khaki over other options precisely because it doesn't try to be clever. It simply is what it is—warm, honest, and materially grounded.
- Avoid: technology products, clinical healthcare, and anything that needs to project cleanliness or digital precision.
- Color harmonies: Khaki's complementary color creates a high-energy split ideal for promotional design; its analogous palette (±30° hue) builds cohesive, monochromatic sophistication.
- Proportional use: Khaki's muted quality means it scales well across proportions—from full-bleed backgrounds to single-pixel borders—making it an unusually versatile palette component.
- Khaki creates strong legibility with black text overlays (9.9:1 contrast ratio), making it a reliable background or surface color in design systems
- Typography: Khaki as text requires a dark background; its 67% lightness means it provides 2.1:1 contrast on white, not meeting WCAG AA.
The brands that use Khaki well are the ones that understand that authenticity can't be faked—it can only be matched by colors that embody it.
Khaki Accessibility: WCAG Contrast Ratios, Color Blindness & Inclusive Design
Khaki (#C3B091) achieves a 9.94:1 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: 44.7%.
- As text on white (#FFFFFF): 2.11:1 — Fail
- As text on black (#000000): 9.94:1 — AAA ✓
- Best text color on Khaki background: Black (#000000) at 9.94:1
- WCAG 2.1 luminance: 44.7% — above-median luminance—it reads as a light to mid-tone background, compatible with dark text while retaining color personality
- Khaki 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.
For production use, test Khaki against your specific background colors rather than assuming #FFFFFF or #000000 performance translates. Surrounding colors alter perceived contrast.
Khaki in Industry: Branding, Design & Market Applications
Khaki (#C3B091) is most at home in industries where earthiness, stability, warmth, and authenticity are key brand values. Its mid-tone quality makes it particularly effective in Food & Beverage contexts, where the muted saturation signals reliability at exactly the right register.
- 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: Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, 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: Khaki 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, Khaki works effectively in artisanal food, furniture and home goods, natural product labels—contexts where reliability serves a secondary but reinforcing role.
The industries where Khaki performs best are those where the audience expects reliability. Build brand strategy around this alignment, not against it.
Accessibility & Design Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the hex code for Khaki? ▾
- The hex code for Khaki is #C3B091. Its RGB values are rgb(195, 176, 145) and its HSL values are hsl(37, 29%, 67%).
- What does Khaki 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. Its lighter value makes it approachable and soft — suitable for backgrounds, secondary UI states, and contexts requiring the hue's character without full intensity.
- Is Khaki WCAG accessible? ▾
- Khaki (#C3B091) does not pass WCAG AA on white (2.11:1 ratio). Use it on dark backgrounds where it achieves 9.94:1. Its overall accessibility score is 48/100.
- What colors go well with Khaki? ▾
- Khaki pairs well with its complementary color Sapphire (#0F52BA). Analogous colors like Jasper and Persimmon also work harmoniously. Check the Color Harmonies section above for the full palette.
- What is Khaki used for? ▾
- Khaki 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 Khaki? ▾
- In CSS, use `color: #C3B091` or `background-color: #C3B091`. The CSS custom property is `--color-khaki-brown: #C3B091`. In Tailwind CSS, use the arbitrary value class `bg-[#C3B091]` for backgrounds or `text-[#C3B091]` for text.