colors
Back to gallery

Hemmed Chive Lagoon

#28bfdc
Notes

Hemmed Chive Lagoon (#28BFDC) 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 (190°, 72%, 51%) 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
#28bfdc
RGB
rgb(40, 191, 220)
HSL
hsl(190, 72%, 51%)
HWB
hwb(190 16% 14%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.3% 0.124 214.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3655 0.7383 0.8487)
HSV
hsv(190, 82%, 86%)
LAB
lab(71.47% -27.68 -25.24)
LCH
lch(71.47% 37.46 222.35)
CMYK
cmyk(82%, 13%, 0%, 14%)

Etymology

Hemmed
adjective

Old English hem, border — past-participle of hem. As a color modifier, hemmed implies a clear-and-finished-and-bordered quality where the hue carries the visual register of carefully-hemmed-and-finished textile-edge. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to trim and finished in usage.

Chive
modifier

Latin cepa, small-onion-grass-herb. As a color modifier, chive implies a slim-grass-onion-and-spring-fresh quality, the visual register of English-cottage-garden-and-French-bistro-chive hand-slim-grass-onion-and-spring-fresh English-cottage-garden-and-French-bistro-chive-and-fines-herbes chive-and-slim-grass-onion surfaces under English-cottage-garden-and-French-bistro-chive-and-fines-herbes Sussex-cottage-and-Lyon-bouchon spring-onion-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to dill and chervil 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.

#28bfdc
Original
#abb9de
Protanopia
#93a8dc
Deuteranopia
#00cac8
Tritanopia
#a1a1a1
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
2.19:1
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
9.58:1

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
##28BFDC
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3655 0.7383 0.8487)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.124

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.

Related Colors

Canvas