Saturation
How intense or how 'washed out' a colour looks — high saturation is vivid, low saturation is closer to grey.
Technical definition
In HSL/HSV colour models, saturation measures a colour's distance from a neutral grey of the same lightness, expressed as a percentage.
Common confusion
Saturation and brightness/value are different axes — a colour can be highly saturated but dark (deep red) or highly saturated but light (bright yellow).
Example
A traffic-cone orange is highly saturated; a stone beige is very low saturation.
Why it matters
Saturation is the main lever behind 'muted' and 'vivid' colour trends and behind Adjust My Colour's more/less-saturated adjustments.
Related terms
Sources
- CSS Color Module Level 4 — W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)