colors
Back to gallery

Tracer Mangrove

#21cba9
Notes

Tracer Mangrove (#21CBA9) 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 (168°, 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
#21cba9
RGB
rgb(33, 203, 169)
HSL
hsl(168, 72%, 46%)
HWB
hwb(168 13% 20%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.4% 0.138 174.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3789 0.7845 0.6687)
HSV
hsv(168, 84%, 80%)
LAB
lab(73.48% -48.53 5.46)
LCH
lch(73.48% 48.84 173.58)
CMYK
cmyk(84%, 0%, 17%, 20%)

Etymology

Tracer
adjective

Old French tracier, to trace — sharing root with English trace and track. As a color modifier, tracer implies a saturated-and-streak-of-light quality, the bright color of military-tracer-round and long-exposure-photography light-trail visual streak. Sits at the bright-and-active end of the grid, parallel to flashing and streaking in usage.

Mangrove
noun

Tropical-coastal salt-tolerant trees — Rhizophora, Avicennia, Bruguiera — whose tangled prop-roots define tropical estuaries from Florida to Borneo. Mangrove color refers to mature mangrove foliage seen against tidal water: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the matte finish of dense salt-adapted leaves.

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.

#21cba9
Original
#c4bda7
Protanopia
#afaeab
Deuteranopia
#00cdc1
Tritanopia
#a4a4a4
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
2.06:1
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
10.18:1

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
##21CBA9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3789 0.7845 0.6687)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.138

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.

Related Colors

Canvas