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Useful Persia Sky

#284e8c
Notes

Useful Persia Sky (#284E8C) is a true azure with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (217°, 56%, 35%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#284e8c
RGB
rgb(40, 78, 140)
HSL
hsl(217, 56%, 35%)
HWB
hwb(217 16% 45%)
OKLCH
oklch(43.0% 0.112 259.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.1930 0.3023 0.5318)
HSV
hsv(217, 71%, 55%)
LAB
lab(33.55% 8.54 -38.45)
LCH
lch(33.55% 39.39 282.53)
CMYK
cmyk(71%, 44%, 0%, 45%)

Etymology

Useful
adjective

Latin ūsus, use — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, useful implies a clear-and-purpose-serving quality where the hue carries the visual register of helpful-and-supporting design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to practical and serviceable in usage.

Persia
modifier

Latin Persia, Persia. As a color modifier, persia implies an Achaemenid-and-Safavid-Imperial quality, the visual register of Achaemenid-Persia-and-Safavid-Persia hand-built Persepolis-and-Isfahan-and-Persian-rug-and-tile Imperial-Persian surfaces under Persepolis-and-Isfahan Achaemenid-and-Safavid Imperial-Persian high-desert light. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to median and achaemenid in usage.

Sky
noun

The blue of a clear sky at noon — produced by Rayleigh scattering, the preferential dispersion of shorter wavelengths through atmospheric molecules. Air itself is colorless; the color we see is sunlight scattered toward our eyes by every cubic kilometer above. The reference shade is mid-latitude noon under a high pressure system: a clean, slightly green-shifted blue with the luminous depth of light scattered across an entire hemisphere of air.

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.

#284e8c
Original
#30548e
Protanopia
#1f4b8b
Deuteranopia
#005c66
Tritanopia
#4a4a4a
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).
AAAon White
8.21:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
Failon Black
2.56:1

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
##284E8C
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.1930 0.3023 0.5318)
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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