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Inviting Wold Lagoon

#23aaca
Notes

Inviting Wold Lagoon (#23AACA) 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 (191°, 70%, 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
#23aaca
RGB
rgb(35, 170, 202)
HSL
hsl(191, 70%, 46%)
HWB
hwb(191 14% 21%)
OKLCH
oklch(68.4% 0.117 218.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3231 0.6570 0.7780)
HSV
hsv(191, 83%, 79%)
LAB
lab(64.46% -23.38 -26.11)
LCH
lch(64.46% 35.05 228.16)
CMYK
cmyk(83%, 16%, 0%, 21%)

Etymology

Inviting
adjective

Latin invītāre, to invite — present-participle of invite. As a color modifier, inviting implies a clear-and-cordial-and-encouraging quality where the hue carries the visual register of warm-inviting-and-encouraging entrance-foyer color tone. Sits at the crisp-and-cheerful end of the grid, parallel to welcoming and hospitable in usage.

Wold
modifier

Old English wald, forested upland. As a color modifier, wold implies a chalk-upland-and-grass quality, the visual register of Lincolnshire-and-Yorkshire-Wolds chalk-and-limestone open-upland sheep-pasture-and-arable rolling surfaces under big-sky Lincolnshire-Wolds open-country light. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to moor and heath in usage.

Lagoon
noun

A shallow body of saltwater partially or fully enclosed by a barrier — coral atoll lagoons in the Pacific, Venice's Laguna Veneta, the Florida Keys' backcountry. The color refers to the average reflectance of a calm tropical lagoon at midday: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical clarity of shallow water over white sand. Brighter than reef, cooler than aquamarine, with the postcard weight of a Pacific atoll seen from above.

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.

#23aaca
Original
#96a5cc
Protanopia
#8096ca
Deuteranopia
#00b5b4
Tritanopia
#909090
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
2.74:1
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
7.67:1

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
##23AACA
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3231 0.6570 0.7780)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.117

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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