Striking Vala Jade
Striking Vala Jade (#21AB67) is a true teal with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (150°, 68%, 40%) 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 magenta. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
The progressive participle of strike, to hit. Used as a color word since the seventeenth century for hues that command immediate attention. Striking red, striking blue: the implication is saturation combined with visual impact. Sits at the bright-bucket center alongside bold and punchy.
Old Norse völva, Norse-seeress-and-staff-bearer. As a color modifier, vala implies a Norse-seeress-and-staff-bearer-and-prophetess quality, the visual register of Norse-vala-seeress-and-staff hand-Norse-seeress-and-staff-bearer-and-prophetess Norse-vala-seeress-and-staff-and-Voluspa-Edda vala-and-Norse-seeress-and-staff-bearer surfaces under Norse-vala-seeress-and-staff-and-Voluspa-Edda Saga-Iceland-and-rune-stave seeress-prophecy-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to norn and freya in usage.
Two minerals share the name: nephrite (a calcium-magnesium silicate, dominant in Chinese jade) and jadeite (a sodium-aluminum silicate, dominant in Burmese imperial jade). Both have been carved in China since at least the Neolithic. The color refers to high-quality apple-green jadeite: a saturated, slightly muted yellow-green with the waxy translucency of polished stone. Cooler than apple, warmer than mint, with the millennial cultural weight of yu, the stone of heaven.
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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.