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Engraved Vesta Lagoon

#20b9df
Notes

Engraved Vesta Lagoon (#20B9DF) 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 (192°, 75%, 50%) 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
#20b9df
RGB
rgb(32, 185, 223)
HSL
hsl(192, 75%, 50%)
HWB
hwb(192 13% 13%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.9% 0.128 220.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3458 0.7149 0.8582)
HSV
hsv(192, 86%, 87%)
LAB
lab(69.70% -24.28 -29.60)
LCH
lch(69.70% 38.28 230.63)
CMYK
cmyk(86%, 17%, 0%, 13%)

Etymology

Engraved
adjective

Old French engraver, to dig in — past-participle of engrave. As a color modifier, engraved implies a clear-and-precisely-cut quality, the crisp color of Albrecht-Dürer-and-Hogarth hand-pulled engraving-print fine-line incised-image. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to etched and inscribed in usage.

Vesta
modifier

Latin Vesta, Roman-goddess-of-hearth. As a color modifier, vesta implies an asteroid-and-hearth-flame-and-bright-and-rocky quality, the visual register of Vesta-asteroid-and-Roman-hearth hand-asteroid-and-hearth-flame-and-bright Vesta-asteroid-and-Roman-hearth-and-Dawn-mission vesta-and-asteroid-and-hearth-flame-and-bright surfaces under Vesta-asteroid-and-Roman-hearth-and-Dawn-mission asteroid-belt-and-Vestal-Temple sacred-flame-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to ceres and juno 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.

#20b9df
Original
#a2b4e1
Protanopia
#8aa3df
Deuteranopia
#00c5c5
Tritanopia
#9b9b9b
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
2.32:1
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
9.07:1

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
##20B9DF
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3458 0.7149 0.8582)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.128

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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