Defined Strand Moss
Defined Strand Moss (#276047) is a deep teal with an earthy character. It leans grounded and natural, the kind of color that plays well with wood, clay, linen, and warm neutrals. Its HSL profile (154°, 42%, 26%) places it in the balanced band at a dark lightness. It works well as a headline, icon, or deep background in an otherwise light layout, pairing cleanly with cream, bone, and warm neutrals. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary magenta. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin dēfīnīre, to set bounds — past-participle of define. As a color modifier, defined implies a clear-and-edge-distinct-and-precise quality where the hue carries the visual register of sharp-bounded-and-clearly-delimited surface. Sits at the crisp-and-clear end of the grid, parallel to crisp and sharp in usage.
Old English strand, shore / beach. As a color modifier, strand implies a London-Thames-bank-and-Anglo-Saxon-shore quality, the visual register of London-Strand-and-North-Sea-coast tidal-shore-and-river-bank embankment-and-walking-promenade surfaces under London-Strand-and-North-Sea-coast tidal-edge atmospheric light. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to shore and coast in usage.
Bryophyta — the nonvascular plants that colonized land 470 million years ago, before vascular plants and far before flowers. The color refers to a thick mat of Hypnum or sphagnum on a temperate forest floor: a soft, slightly yellow-shifted green with the velvet texture of millimeter-scale leaves. Dustier than fern, deeper than lichen, with the slow patience of a plant that lives by absorbing rain through its surface.
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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.