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Buttoned Goth Teal

#21c8b5
Notes

Buttoned Goth Teal (#21C8B5) 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 (173°, 72%, 46%) 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
#21c8b5
RGB
rgb(33, 200, 181)
HSL
hsl(173, 72%, 46%)
HWB
hwb(173 13% 22%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.0% 0.129 182.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3735 0.7729 0.7103)
HSV
hsv(173, 84%, 78%)
LAB
lab(72.87% -44.07 -1.92)
LCH
lch(72.87% 44.11 182.50)
CMYK
cmyk(84%, 0%, 9%, 22%)

Etymology

Buttoned
adjective

Old French bouton, button — past-participle of button. As a color modifier, buttoned implies a clear-and-fastened-and-formal quality, the crisp color of Edwardian-period formal-attire fully-fastened-and-formally-dressed gentleman's-attire. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to trim and pressed in usage.

Goth
modifier

Greek Gothi, Goths. As a color modifier, goth implies a Germanic-tribal-migration quality, the visual register of Visigothic-and-Ostrogothic-Kingdoms late-Roman-period hand-built Germanic-Migration-period kingdom-and-fortification surfaces under Visigothic-Spain-and-Ostrogothic-Italy late-Roman Migration-Period sky. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to vandal and hun in usage.

Teal
noun

Anas crecca, the small dabbling duck whose male in breeding plumage sports a chestnut head crossed by a glossy green-blue stripe. The color refers to that stripe — the iridescent panel just behind the eye: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical depth of structural color rather than pigment. Cooler than cypress, warmer than cerulean, with the ornithological specificity of a color named for one feather of one bird.

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.

#21c8b5
Original
#bebcb4
Protanopia
#a9acb7
Deuteranopia
#00ccc2
Tritanopia
#a3a3a3
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
2.10:1
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
9.99:1

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
##21C8B5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3735 0.7729 0.7103)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.129

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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