Swapped my accent color from orange to a darker rust and my tiny dropdown menu finally passes contrast checks | Color Theory in Practice

Vera Coleman · 2026-10-24T07:35:03.581703+00:00

Spent the last week fighting with a dark gray nav bar on a small bakery site here in Dayton. My orange accent looked fine to me on my monitor, but the contrast checker kept failing on the dropdown links. Tried lightening the text, tried bolding it, nothing felt right. Then I just darkened the orange toward a rust brown and it passed at 4.7:1 on the first try. Same warm feel, no more red boxes in the checker. Anyone else find that one shade tweak does more than a whole redesign?

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Swapped my accent color from orange to a darker rust and my tiny dropdown menu finally passes contrast checks | Color Theory in Practice - The Design Community Hub