An atmosphere should set a mood, not tax your eyes. A few of ours did both. Primary text was always sharp — but in more atmospheres than we'd like, secondary labels and the faintest tertiary detail had drifted below the contrast a body of text deserves. Beautiful at a glance. Harder to read than it should be.
We measured all twenty-four. Then we fixed all twenty-four.
Every atmosphere's secondary and tertiary text is now lifted to an AA+ contrast floor — measured against the worse of the two surfaces it can rest on, the background and the panel above it. The lift changes lightness alone: hue and saturation are preserved. A warm palette stays warm, a cool one stays cool. Tobacco is still tobacco. Glacier is still glacier. They are simply legible now, in every tier of text — not only the brightest.
And it stays fixed. A contrast audit now runs across all twenty-four atmospheres on every build. Any atmosphere — one we have today or one we add tomorrow — that drops a text tier below the floor fails the build. Readability is no longer something we hope holds. It is a gate.
#What changed
- 24 atmospheres recalibrated — secondary text to ≥5.5:1, tertiary to ≥4:1, against the worse of background and surface
- Hue-preserving lift — contrast raised through lightness alone; every palette keeps its color and warmth
- Primary text untouched — already at AAA; the text hierarchy stays intact
- A build-time contrast gate — the full atmosphere set is audited on every build; anything below the AA+ floor fails it
- Readability Lab — an internal surface to check each atmosphere against live WCAG readouts
The mood was never the problem. Now you can read every word of it.