Tints & Shades
50
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
Scale from white (50) through Olive Drab (500) to black (900), interpolated in Lab color space.
Color Values
- HEX
- #6B8E23
- RGB
- rgb(107, 142, 35)
- HSL
- hsl(80, 60%, 35%)
- OKLCH
- oklch(0.599 0.137 126)
- CMYK
- cmyk(25%, 0%, 75%, 44%)
--color-olive-drabbg-[#6B8E23]Accessibility
Score: 39/100On White (#FFF)
3.81:1
On Black (#000)
5.52:1
On Light Gray (#F5F5F5)
3.49:1
Best text color on this background:
Design Applications
background-color: #6B8E23
color: #6B8E23
bg-[#6B8E23] text-[#000000]
border-left: 4px solid #6B8E23
Color Harmonies
Complementary
Medium Purple
#9370DB
Split-Complementary
Similar Colors
Color Meaning & Psychology
Green occupies the center of the visible spectrum where the eye is most sensitive, making it the easiest color to process — literally restful for the eye. Green's associations with nature, growth, and fresh produce are deeply biological, rooted in the evolutionary advantage of finding food. In finance, "going green" means profit. In design, green signals health, sustainability, and natural ingredients. Darker greens evoke prestige and reliability; lighter greens feel fresh and energetic; blue-greens feel sophisticated and trustworthy. Green is uniquely cross-cultural in positive associations, though it represents environmental risk in some financial contexts. Its deeper, richer tone gives it gravitas and sophistication, making it well-suited for primary brand colors, typography, and contexts where authority matters.
Industry Usage
Common contexts and industries where Olive Drab is applied in professional design.
- Financial services and investment platforms
- Health, wellness, and organic food brands
- Environmental and sustainability organizations
- Pharmaceutical and medical products
- Agriculture and farming brands
- Eco-friendly consumer goods
- Real estate and property development
- Success and achievement badges in UI
Accessibility Considerations
Normal Text
Fails AA
4.5:1 minimum required
Large Text
Passes AA Large
3:1 minimum required
UI Components
Meets 1.4.11
3:1 for non-text UI
Olive Drab is a light color. Use black (#000000) text on top of it for maximum readability (5.52:1). Avoid white text on this background.
CSS & Code Examples
Background
background-color: #6B8E23;Text
color: #6B8E23;Border
border: 2px solid #6B8E23;Box Shadow
box-shadow: 0 4px 20px #6B8E2340;Gradient
background: linear-gradient(135deg, #6B8E23, #9cbe53);Tailwind-style
--color-olive-drab: #6B8E23;Tailwind CSS Utilities
Use arbitrary value syntax in Tailwind CSS to apply Olive Drab without a custom config.
Background
bg-[#6B8E23]Text
text-[#6B8E23]Border
border-[#6B8E23]Ring
ring-[#6B8E23]Fill
fill-[#6B8E23]From (gradient)
from-[#6B8E23]Via (gradient)
via-[#6B8E23]To (gradient)
to-[#6B8E23]Design Tokens
Ready-to-use Olive Drab design token in CSS custom properties, SCSS, Tailwind v3/v4, and JSON formats.
CSS Custom Properties
:root {
--color-olive-drab: #6B8E23;
--color-olive-drab-rgb: 107, 142, 35;
--color-olive-drab-hsl: 80, 60%, 35%;
}SCSS Variables
$color-olive-drab: #6B8E23; $color-olive-drab-rgb: 107, 142, 35; $color-olive-drab-hsl: 80, 60%, 35%;
Tailwind v3 Config
// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
theme: {
extend: {
colors: {
'olive-drab': '#6B8E23',
},
},
},
};Tailwind v4 (@theme)
/* tailwind.css */
@theme {
--color-olive-drab: #6B8E23;
}JSON Design Token (W3C format)
{
"olive-drab": {
"value": "#6B8E23",
"type": "color",
"description": "Olive Drab — #6B8E23"
}
}More green colors
View all →What Does Olive Drab Mean? Color Psychology & Cultural Symbolism
The green spectrum contains multitudes: jungle growth and financial gain, medical healing and environmental responsibility. Olive Drab at #6B8E23 navigates this complexity with a deep quality that emphasizes health—the aspect of green psychology most useful in healthcare design.
- Across color psychology research, green consistently tests high for "health" associations, making Olive Drab a reliable vehicle for health in cross-demographic audiences.
- Brand designers draw on green-family tones to project trustworthiness and reliability—values that Olive Drab communicates in a deep key.
- At 60% saturation, Olive Drab reads as moderately saturated—neither overwhelming nor passive, landing in the growth, nature, health, and balance zone with measured confidence.
- Olive Drab's deep lightness (35%) shifts its psychological register: a balanced mid-tone that embodies growth, nature, health, and balance at its most direct.
The enduring power of Olive Drab is that it never needs to explain itself—growth, health, and permission are universally understood.
How to Use Olive Drab in Design: Applications, Pairings & Best Practices
The design applications of Olive Drab span from digital UI states to full brand identity systems. Its moderately saturated saturation (60%) means it reads as a clear, confident presence that holds its ground without overwhelming in both contexts—strong accents, headers, and primary brand applications where visual authority is required in background uses, more active as an accent.
- Avoid: warning or danger contexts (except for safety signs), over-saturated versions in premium luxury branding, and contexts requiring urgency.
- Color harmonies: Olive Drab's complementary color creates a high-energy split ideal for promotional design; its analogous palette (±30° hue) builds cohesive, monochromatic sophistication.
- Proportional use: Olive Drab's moderately saturated quality means it scales well across proportions—from full-bleed backgrounds to single-pixel borders—making it an unusually versatile palette component.
- Olive Drab creates strong legibility with black text overlays (5.5:1 contrast ratio), making it a reliable background or surface color in design systems
- Typography: Olive Drab as text requires a dark background; its 35% lightness means it provides 3.8:1 contrast on white, not meeting WCAG AA.
The enduring power of Olive Drab is that it never needs to explain itself—growth, health, and permission are universally understood.
Olive Drab Accessibility: WCAG Contrast Ratios, Color Blindness & Inclusive Design
Olive Drab (#6B8E23) reaches 5.52:1 contrast with black text—meeting WCAG 2.1 AA minimum of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. It clears standard production accessibility requirements. Relative luminance: 22.6%.
- As text on white (#FFFFFF): 3.81:1 — AA (large text only)
- As text on black (#000000): 5.52:1 — AA ✓
- Best text color on Olive Drab background: Black (#000000) at 5.52:1
- WCAG 2.1 luminance: 22.6% — mid-range luminance—it sits in the transition zone where both dark and light text approaches require testing against the 4.5:1 WCAG threshold
- Olive Drab qualifies for normal body text and all larger sizes (AA).
Olive Drab's WCAG profile makes it a compliant choice for most text applications.
Olive Drab in Industry: Branding, Design & Market Applications
Olive Drab (#6B8E23) is most at home in industries where growth, nature, health, and balance are key brand values. Its deep quality makes it particularly effective in Healthcare & Wellness contexts, where the moderately saturated saturation signals nature at exactly the right register.
- Healthcare & Wellness: Green's association with health, nature, and healing makes it the second-most-common color in healthcare branding (after blue). It signals vitality, recovery, and natural wellness without the clinical coldness of pure white or blue. (examples: Headspace, One Medical, Kaiser Permanente) Works best in teal-green and sage variations for digital health products; more saturated greens suit fitness and sports medicine.
- Finance & Banking: In Western markets, the green-money association is deeply embedded. Financial institutions use dark, sophisticated greens to communicate growth, prosperity, and fiduciary reliability. It's equally effective for positive portfolio indicators and "go" confirmation states in trading UIs. (examples: Capital One, PayPal, Visa) Dark greens with gold accents signal premium financial services; bright greens in fintech apps signal growth metrics.
- Sustainability & Organic: Green is the categorical color of environmental consciousness. Sustainability brands, organic food labels, and clean-energy companies use it as an immediate, unambiguous signal of ecological values and natural origin. (examples: Patagonia, Allbirds, Grove Collaborative) The challenge is differentiation—nearly every sustainability brand uses green, so typography, illustration style, and specific tone matter more.
- Brand positioning: Olive Drab is best suited for brands projecting trustworthiness, reliability, growth. Categories outside this positioning—warning or danger contexts (except for safety signs)—tend to see weaker results.
- Adjacent applications: Beyond primary industries, Olive Drab works effectively in financial dashboards, nature and outdoor products, health and wellness UIs—contexts where nature serves a secondary but reinforcing role.
The industries where Olive Drab performs best are those where the audience expects nature. Build brand strategy around this alignment, not against it.
Accessibility & Design Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the hex code for Olive Drab? ▾
- The hex code for Olive Drab is #6B8E23. Its RGB values are rgb(107, 142, 35) and its HSL values are hsl(80, 60%, 35%).
- What does Olive Drab mean in design? ▾
- Green occupies the center of the visible spectrum where the eye is most sensitive, making it the easiest color to process — literally restful for the eye. Green's associations with nature, growth, and fresh produce are deeply biological, rooted in the evolutionary advantage of finding food. In finance, "going green" means profit. In design, green signals health, sustainability, and natural ingredients. Darker greens evoke prestige and reliability; lighter greens feel fresh and energetic; blue-greens feel sophisticated and trustworthy. Green is uniquely cross-cultural in positive associations, though it represents environmental risk in some financial contexts. Its deeper, richer tone gives it gravitas and sophistication, making it well-suited for primary brand colors, typography, and contexts where authority matters.
- Is Olive Drab WCAG accessible? ▾
- Olive Drab (#6B8E23) passes WCAG AA-large on white with a 3.81:1 contrast ratio. Its overall accessibility score is 39/100.
- What colors go well with Olive Drab? ▾
- Olive Drab pairs well with its complementary color Medium Purple (#9370DB). Analogous colors like Sunshine and Pear Yellow also work harmoniously. Check the Color Harmonies section above for the full palette.
- What is Olive Drab used for? ▾
- Olive Drab is commonly used for: Financial services and investment platforms; Health, wellness, and organic food brands; Environmental and sustainability organizations; Pharmaceutical and medical products; Agriculture and farming brands.
- What are the CSS and Tailwind values for Olive Drab? ▾
- In CSS, use `color: #6B8E23` or `background-color: #6B8E23`. The CSS custom property is `--color-olive-drab: #6B8E23`. In Tailwind CSS, use the arbitrary value class `bg-[#6B8E23]` for backgrounds or `text-[#6B8E23]` for text.