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Grounded Moot Sapphire

#223fae
Notes

Grounded Moot Sapphire (#223FAE) is a true blue with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (228°, 67%, 41%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#223fae
RGB
rgb(34, 63, 174)
HSL
hsl(228, 67%, 41%)
HWB
hwb(228 13% 32%)
OKLCH
oklch(42.3% 0.180 266.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.1600 0.2442 0.6571)
HSV
hsv(228, 80%, 68%)
LAB
lab(31.69% 31.06 -62.01)
LCH
lch(31.69% 69.36 296.60)
CMYK
cmyk(80%, 64%, 0%, 32%)

Etymology

Grounded
adjective

Old English grund, bottom / foundation — past-participle of ground. As a color modifier, grounded implies a saturated-and-foundational quality where the hue anchors the surrounding palette through its weighty presence. Sits at the bold-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to centered and anchored.

Moot
modifier

Old English mōt, meeting-or-debate-point. As a color modifier, moot implies a debated-and-suspended-and-undecided quality, the visual register of Anglo-Saxon-witenagemot-and-Inns-of-Court-moot hand-argued-and-suspended Anglo-Saxon-witenagemot-and-medieval-moot-court witenagemot-and-Inns-of-Court-and-shire-court mooted-and-debated surfaces under Anglo-Saxon-witenagemot-and-Inns-of-Court oak-bench-and-vellum debate-hall-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to void and blank in usage.

Sapphire
noun

An iron-and-titanium-bearing corundum — the same mineral as ruby, hardness 9 on the Mohs scale, mined for two millennia from Sri Lanka, Burma, Madagascar, and the Cashmere mines of British India. The color refers to a fine Kashmir-cut sapphire: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted deep blue with the gem's signature internal velvet — a quality of light scattering in the stone that faceted glass cannot replicate. Cooler than cobalt, deeper than azure.

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.

#223fae
Original
#0051b2
Protanopia
#0044ac
Deuteranopia
#005c70
Tritanopia
#414141
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).
AAAon White
8.79:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
Failon Black
2.39:1

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
##223FAE
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.1600 0.2442 0.6571)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.180

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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