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Drafted Pixie Teal

#27c6ae
Notes

Drafted Pixie Teal (#27C6AE) is a true teal with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (171°, 67%, 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
#27c6ae
RGB
rgb(39, 198, 174)
HSL
hsl(171, 67%, 46%)
HWB
hwb(171 15% 22%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.4% 0.128 179.3)
HSV
hsv(171, 80%, 78%)
LAB
lab(72.14% -44.61 0.83)
LCH
lch(72.14% 44.62 178.94)
CMYK
cmyk(80%, 0%, 12%, 22%)

Etymology

Drafted
adjective

Old English draht, draft — past-participle of draft. As a color modifier, drafted implies a clear-and-line-and-measured quality, the crisp color of Mid-Century-Modern hand-drafted architectural-and-engineering studio-drawing precision-tool-rendered lines. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to drawn and plotted in usage.

Pixie
modifier

English Cornish piskie, small-mischievous-fairy. As a color modifier, pixie implies a small-mischievous-Cornish-Devon-fairy quality, the visual register of Cornish-and-Devon-pixie-folk hand-small-mischievous-Cornish-Devon-fairy Cornish-and-Devon-pixie-folk-and-moorland-fairy pixie-and-small-mischievous-fairy surfaces under Cornish-and-Devon-pixie-folk-and-moorland-fairy Bodmin-Moor-and-Dartmoor-stone-circle moorland-fairy-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to sprite and gnome in usage.

Teal
noun

Anas crecca, the small dabbling duck whose male in breeding plumage sports a chestnut head crossed by a glossy green-blue stripe. The color refers to that stripe — the iridescent panel just behind the eye: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical depth of structural color rather than pigment. Cooler than cypress, warmer than cerulean, with the ornithological specificity of a color named for one feather of one bird.

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.

#27c6ae
Original
#bdbaad
Protanopia
#a9abb0
Deuteranopia
#00c9bf
Tritanopia
#a2a2a2
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
2.15:1
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
9.78:1

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