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Open Brood Verdigris

#26b4b3
Notes

Open Brood Verdigris (#26B4B3) 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 (180°, 65%, 43%) 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
#26b4b3
RGB
rgb(38, 180, 179)
HSL
hsl(180, 65%, 43%)
HWB
hwb(180 15% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(70.0% 0.112 194.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3440 0.6957 0.6971)
HSV
hsv(180, 79%, 71%)
LAB
lab(66.75% -35.26 -9.87)
LCH
lch(66.75% 36.61 195.64)
CMYK
cmyk(79%, 0%, 1%, 29%)

Etymology

Open
adjective

Old English open, unobstructed — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as airy or uncrowded. Open blue, open green: moderate saturation combined with optical spaciousness, the slight visual breath of a hue that doesn't crowd the surface it covers. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside clear.

Brood
modifier

Old English brōd, young-of-birds-or-to-ponder. As a color modifier, brood implies a hen-and-pondering-and-darkly-thinking quality, the visual register of Heathcliff-and-Hamlet-brood hand-hen-and-pondering-and-darkly-thinking Heathcliff-and-Hamlet-and-Byronic-hero brooded-and-pondering-and-darkly-thinking surfaces under Heathcliff-and-Hamlet-and-Byronic-hero stormy-and-overcast-and-introspective Yorkshire-moor-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to mope and sigh in usage.

Verdigris
noun

The basic copper carbonate that forms on weathered copper and bronze — the pigment scraped from oxidized metal and used in Renaissance painting before being supplanted by more stable greens. The color refers to a thick verdigris on aged copper roofing or the Statue of Liberty's surface: a soft, slightly muted blue-green with the powdery finish of mineral oxide. Cooler than patina, warmer than seafoam, with the archaeological weight of a mineral made by time.

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.

#26b4b3
Original
#a8abb3
Protanopia
#949cb4
Deuteranopia
#00bab3
Tritanopia
#969696
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
2.54:1
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
8.26:1

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
##26B4B3
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3440 0.6957 0.6971)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.112

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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