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Easy Turret Kingfisher

#039cb5
Notes

Easy Turret Kingfisher (#039CB5) is a true cyan with a jewel character. It carries the deep, saturated richness of a gemstone. Authoritative and slightly formal, it works well for type and heavy UI elements. Its HSL profile (188°, 97%, 36%) places it in the highly saturated band at a mid lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary red. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#039cb5
RGB
rgb(3, 156, 181)
HSL
hsl(188, 97%, 36%)
HWB
hwb(188 1% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(63.7% 0.112 214.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.2712 0.6025 0.6978)
HSV
hsv(188, 98%, 71%)
LAB
lab(59.09% -24.99 -22.61)
LCH
lch(59.09% 33.70 222.14)
CMYK
cmyk(98%, 14%, 0%, 29%)

Etymology

Easy
adjective

Old French aisié, comfortable, at rest — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as visually undemanding. Easy beige, easy gray: moderate saturation combined with optical restfulness. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside calm and settled.

Turret
modifier

Old French touret, small-tower. As a color modifier, turret implies a small-decorative-tower-on-castle quality, the visual register of Loire-Valley-château-and-Disney-castle-turret hand-built small-decorative-castle-and-château turret-and-spire architectural surfaces under French-and-fairy-tale-château turret-and-spire light. Sits at the modifier-and-architecture end of the grid, parallel to tower and spire in usage.

Kingfisher
noun

The family Alcedinidae — particularly Alcedo atthis, the European common kingfisher whose iridescent turquoise-blue plumage gives the color its name. The color refers to a male European kingfisher's wing: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the iridescent satin finish of structurally colored feathers.

Closest matches

The nearest named color in three reference sources, ranked by perceptual distance (ΔE76 in CIELAB). ΔE < 1 is imperceptible to most viewers; ΔE > 10 is clearly different. When two sources point to the same hex they’re merged into one tile; click any to open that color’s page.

Variations

Click any swatch to explore

Harmonies

Accessibility

Color-vision simulation

How this color appears to viewers with the four major color-vision-deficiency types. Computed via the Machado (2009) physiologically-based model. If a tile matches the original, the color reads the same to that viewer.

#039cb5
Original
#8a97b6
Protanopia
#7688b5
Deuteranopia
#00a5a4
Tritanopia
#7d7d7d
Achromatopsia
WCAG contrast

The color used as foreground text against pure white and pure black, with the contrast ratio and WCAG 2.1 grade. Aim for AA (4.5:1) for body text and AA Large (3:1) for 18 pt+ headlines; AAA (7:1) is the gold standard for long-form reading surfaces.

The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AA Largeon White
3.27:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon Black
6.43:1

Wide gamut

Display P3 representation

The CSS Color 4 wide-gamut form of this color. Both swatches render the same color on every display — the P3 form only diverges from sRGB when a designer pushes channels outside sRGB's reach.

sRGB hex
sRGB hex
##039CB5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.2712 0.6025 0.6978)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.112

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

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