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Stamped Ether Lagoon

#1fa9c9
Notes

Stamped Ether Lagoon (#1FA9C9) is a true cyan with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (191°, 73%, 45%) 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
#1fa9c9
RGB
rgb(31, 169, 201)
HSL
hsl(191, 73%, 45%)
HWB
hwb(191 12% 21%)
OKLCH
oklch(68.1% 0.117 218.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3166 0.6531 0.7740)
HSV
hsv(191, 85%, 79%)
LAB
lab(64.06% -23.51 -26.16)
LCH
lch(64.06% 35.17 228.06)
CMYK
cmyk(85%, 16%, 0%, 21%)

Etymology

Stamped
adjective

Old English stempan, to stamp — past-participle of stamp. As a color modifier, stamped implies a clear-and-impressed-and-repeating quality, the crisp color of William-Morris-and-Liberty-of-London block-printed-textile carefully-impressed pattern. Sits at the crisp-and-printed end of the grid, parallel to printed and engraved in usage.

Ether
modifier

Greek αἰθήρ, upper-air-or-quintessence. As a color modifier, ether implies a luminiferous-and-pure-upper-air quality, the visual register of Aristotelian-quintessence-and-luminiferous-ether hand-luminiferous-and-pure-upper-air Aristotelian-quintessence-and-luminiferous-and-Newtonian ether-and-luminiferous-and-pure-upper-air surfaces under Aristotelian-quintessence-and-luminiferous-and-Newtonian celestial-spheres-and-natural-philosophy upper-air-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to plasma and nebula in usage.

Lagoon
noun

A shallow body of saltwater partially or fully enclosed by a barrier — coral atoll lagoons in the Pacific, Venice's Laguna Veneta, the Florida Keys' backcountry. The color refers to the average reflectance of a calm tropical lagoon at midday: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical clarity of shallow water over white sand. Brighter than reef, cooler than aquamarine, with the postcard weight of a Pacific atoll seen from above.

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.

#1fa9c9
Original
#95a4cb
Protanopia
#7f95c9
Deuteranopia
#00b4b3
Tritanopia
#8e8e8e
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).
Failon White
2.77:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon Black
7.58:1

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
##1FA9C9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3166 0.6531 0.7740)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.117

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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