Yellow ochre: Color codes, color palettes, and uses

Welcome to the world of yellow ochre, a brownish yellow used in everything from ancient cave art to contemporary fashion and branding. With its earthiness and hints of gold, it’s a perfect choice for a wide range of color palettes.

If you’ve ever squinted at a color and thought, “Is that mustard? Dijon? Gold with an attitude?” — you might’ve been staring straight at yellow ochre. With a hex code of #CB9D06, it’s the cool, grounded sibling in the yellow family — less ‘look at me!’ than mustard yellow, but with way more depth and history.

Curious how this ancient color keeps showing up in modern design? Let’s break it down.

Check out these yellow ochre palettes for ideas on how to use yellow ochre in your designs — either as a standalone color or in combination with other colors.

Monochromatic palettes use variations in tints, tones, or shades of one hue to create a harmonious palette. This monochromatic yellow ochre palette demonstrates the effects of adding greater and greater percentages of white. The palette communicates simplicity and elegance and evokes feelings of harmony. It allows the designer to minimize distraction and direct viewers’ attention to key elements of the design.

The hex, CMYK, and RGB codes for this palette are:

This gorgeous analogous yellow ochre color palette, with its vibrant yellows and oranges, creates an inspiring and energizing mood that brings warmth and optimism to any project. Being next to each other on the color wheel, the colors interact seamlessly and bring a cohesive look to any design.

The hex, CMYK, and RGB codes for this palette are:

Color theory is a fascinating field. This video is perfect for beginners who want to know more about it.

Create a complementary color scheme by pairing yellow ochre with blue, the color opposite it on the color wheel. Paired together, these colors appear more vibrant and create a cohesive color plan. In our example, we offer two pairings. One is yellow ochre with its complement, and the other is a deeper shade of yellow ochre with its own complement, which is also a deeper shade of the blue hue.

Create a triadic color scheme by picking three colors equally spaced on the color wheel. This multicolored selection will bring high vibrancy and contrast to your projects.

With such a vibrant palette, adding neutrals like white, gray, or black to your design is a good idea. You could also use shades of your triadic colors to add depth and create a more balanced and nuanced visual experience. We added a shade of yellow ochre as the fourth color in our palette.

Tetradic color schemes are made from two pairs of complementary colors chosen in a square or rectangular shape on the color wheel. The colors in a tetradic scheme will create high vibrancy and contrast. To keep your design from appearing garish and visually overwhelming, include neutrals like white, gray, or black, and/or tints, tones, and shades of your triadic colors.

Yellow is the color of sunlight and thus has both power and life-giving qualities. In color psychology, yellow is associated with warmth and positivity. As a color that occurs naturally in the earth, yellow ochre inspires a feeling of connection to nature. This vibrant yet earthy shade also radiates enthusiasm and happiness, making it an excellent choice for projects striving to energize and uplift. At the same time, with its organic connection to the earth, it brings a grounded timelessness to every design.

Want to learn more about color psychology? Check out this video:

Ochre is a family of natural pigments that include yellow ochre, sienna, and umber. It’s found everywhere where the local clay or rocks contain significant amounts of iron. When the iron is exposed to elements like air, water, and sunlight, it undergoes various oxidation levels, which change its color.

The word ochre is derived from the Greek ochros, which means “yellowish.” Ochres are lightfast and stable and have been used in various parts of the world to create cave paintings dating back as far as 75,000 years.

Ochre color paints and dyes are among the oldest in human history, and their use and meaning have changed throughout time. Here are the most famous and popular uses for the yellow ochre pigment.

Across Africa, New Guinea, and Australia, yellow ochre has been used in ceremonial practices and body paints for thousands of years. Our ancestors also used it to create incredible cave drawings and paintings that can still be seen everywhere from Africa to Australia to Southern Europe.

In ancient Egypt, where ochre paints and dyes were used in cosmetics and paintings in tombs, ochre was considered a symbol of life and eternity.

Ochre had a similar meaning for ancient Romans, who used the pigment extensively in their murals to depict gold.

Since yellow ochre was a readily available earth pigment, many European painters across the centuries (Caravaggio, Vermeer, Michelangelo, Paul Gaugin, Kandinsky, and Van Gogh, to name a few) used it in their works.

Its use took off in the late 1800s, when Jean-Étienne Astier, a French scientist, invented an industrial process to make ochre color pigment on a large scale. That made it even more widely available, and it was exported across Europe and the world.

Yellow ochre is used in fashion in everything from dresses, suits, and coats to hoodies and sweatpants.

Because of its vibrancy, yellow ochre is particularly popular in footwear and handbags.

Because it evokes a strong sense of joy and optimism in potential customers, brands often use yellow in their messaging and/or logos to link these emotions to their product and experience.

It’s no mystery why yellow’s cheerful, upbeat impact makes it a perfect branding color for food companies like McDonald’s, Cheerios, and Nesquik.

A: Yellow ochre is a natural earth pigment, a brownish-yellow to golden-yellow color derived from iron oxide, clay, and other minerals.

A: The yellow ochre hex code is #CB9D06.

A: You can create this earthy hue by blending dark red with light yellow.

A: You can darken yellow ochre by adding small amounts of gray or black.

A: Yellow ochre is a warm color.

A: It is pronounced: “Oh – ker”.

A: Both yellow ochre and yellow ocher are acceptable spellings. “Ocher” is sometimes used in U.S. English, but “ochre” is much more common overall.

Yellow ochre is a terrific color to incorporate into your creative projects. The earthy and joyful hue is perfect for including in your branding palettes and logo design.

For more inspiration, check out this collection of yellow ochre creative assets available at Envato. If you want to explore trending colors and/or artists who have influenced design, check out our articles on cerulean blue and Georgia O’Keeffe.