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Useful Tent Ocean

#17879d
Notes

Useful Tent Ocean (#17879D) 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 (190°, 74%, 35%) places it in the balanced band at a mid lightness. It works across type, buttons, and borders, saturated enough to feel deliberate but balanced enough to not fight the rest of the palette. 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
#17879d
RGB
rgb(23, 135, 157)
HSL
hsl(190, 74%, 35%)
HWB
hwb(190 9% 38%)
OKLCH
oklch(57.6% 0.097 215.4)
HSV
hsv(190, 85%, 62%)
LAB
lab(51.77% -21.32 -20.08)
LCH
lch(51.77% 29.29 223.29)
CMYK
cmyk(85%, 14%, 0%, 38%)

Etymology

Useful
adjective

Latin ūsus, use — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, useful implies a clear-and-purpose-serving quality where the hue carries the visual register of helpful-and-supporting design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to practical and serviceable in usage.

Tent
modifier

Old French tente, stretched-cloth. As a color modifier, tent implies a stretched-canvas-shelter quality, the visual register of Bedouin-and-Mongolian nomadic-and-encampment stretched-canvas-and-felt-and-rope tent-and-yurt surfaces under desert-and-steppe nomadic-encampment open-sky light. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to hut and bivouac in usage.

Ocean
noun

The body of saltwater that covers seventy percent of Earth's surface — a single connected mass divided by convention into Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Southern, and Arctic. The color refers to the average reflectance of mid-depth temperate ocean: a saturated, slightly green-shifted deep blue with the optical depth of a body of water that absorbs all light below the photic zone. Deeper than mediterranean, cooler than peacock.

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.

#17879d
Original
#78829e
Protanopia
#67769d
Deuteranopia
#008f8e
Tritanopia
#717171
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
4.21:1
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
4.99:1

Related Colors

Canvas