colors
Back to gallery

Sanitary Fall Turquoise

#22bcc7
Notes

Sanitary Fall Turquoise (#22BCC7) 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 (184°, 71%, 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
#22bcc7
RGB
rgb(34, 188, 199)
HSL
hsl(184, 71%, 46%)
HWB
hwb(184 13% 22%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.7% 0.118 202.7)
HSV
hsv(184, 83%, 78%)
LAB
lab(69.77% -33.31 -16.36)
LCH
lch(69.77% 37.11 206.16)
CMYK
cmyk(83%, 6%, 0%, 22%)

Etymology

Sanitary
adjective

Latin sānitās, health — adjectival suffix -ary. As a color modifier, sanitary implies a clear-and-clean-and-medical quality, the crisp color of Bauhaus-and-Modern clinical-and-hospital interior-architecture white-tile-and-stainless-steel surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to hygienic and sterile in usage.

Fall
modifier

Old English feallan, to fall / autumn. As a color modifier, fall implies an autumn-leaf-and-harvest quality, the visual register of New-England-and-English-autumn deciduous-leaf-fall maple-and-oak-and-beech autumnal-orange-and-crimson surfaces under Northern-Hemisphere autumn raking light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to yule and reap in usage.

Turquoise
noun

The hydrated copper-aluminum phosphate mined in Persia and the American Southwest for thousands of years — the firuze of Iran, the chalchihuitl of Mesoamerica, the heart of Pueblo and Navajo silverwork. The color refers to a fine Sleeping Beauty turquoise from Arizona: a saturated, slightly green-shifted blue with the slight matrix of host-rock veining. Brighter than persian, lighter than cerulean.

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.

#22bcc7
Original
#acb4c8
Protanopia
#97a4c8
Deuteranopia
#00c4bf
Tritanopia
#9c9c9c
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
2.31:1
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
9.09:1

Related Colors

Canvas