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Cleansed Squire Lagoon

#28aecd
Notes

Cleansed Squire Lagoon (#28AECD) 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°, 67%, 48%) 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
#28aecd
RGB
rgb(40, 174, 205)
HSL
hsl(191, 67%, 48%)
HWB
hwb(191 16% 20%)
OKLCH
oklch(69.6% 0.116 218.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3364 0.6726 0.7899)
HSV
hsv(191, 80%, 80%)
LAB
lab(65.85% -24.00 -25.63)
LCH
lch(65.85% 35.11 226.88)
CMYK
cmyk(80%, 15%, 0%, 20%)

Etymology

Cleansed
adjective

Old English clǣnsian, to make clean — past-participle of cleanse. As a color modifier, cleansed implies a clear-and-purified quality where the hue has been stripped of any contaminating tint. Sits at the crisp-and-clear end of the grid, parallel to fresh and pristine in usage.

Squire
modifier

Old French escuyer, shield-bearer. As a color modifier, squire implies a knight's-attendant-and-page-of-arms quality, the visual register of English-and-French-Squire hand-forged shield-and-stirrup-and-tabard knight's-attendant-and-page-of-arms surfaces under English-and-French-Squire hand-forged shield-and-stirrup ceremonial-court light. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to knight and page 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.

#28aecd
Original
#9aa9cf
Protanopia
#8599cd
Deuteranopia
#00b9b8
Tritanopia
#949494
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
2.62:1
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
8.03:1

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
##28AECD
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3364 0.6726 0.7899)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.116

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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