colors
Back to gallery

Dependable Carved Teal

#2ac3aa
Notes

Dependable Carved Teal (#2AC3AA) 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 (170°, 65%, 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
#2ac3aa
RGB
rgb(42, 195, 170)
HSL
hsl(170, 65%, 46%)
HWB
hwb(170 16% 24%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.5% 0.127 178.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3749 0.7537 0.6696)
HSV
hsv(170, 78%, 76%)
LAB
lab(71.16% -44.10 1.58)
LCH
lch(71.16% 44.13 177.95)
CMYK
cmyk(78%, 0%, 13%, 24%)

Etymology

Dependable
adjective

Latin dē-pendere, to hang from — adjectival suffix -able. As a color modifier, dependable implies a clear-and-trustworthy-and-consistent quality where the hue carries the visual register of consistently-performing-and-counted-on design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to reliable and trustworthy in usage.

Carved
modifier

Old English ceorfan, to-cut. As a color modifier, carved implies a hand-cut-and-shaped quality, the visual register of Romanesque-and-Gothic-stone-carving hand-cut-and-shaped stone-and-wood-and-ivory hand-carved-and-relief carved-and-shaped surfaces under Romanesque-and-Gothic hand-carved-stone-and-wood workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to hewn and limned 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.

#2ac3aa
Original
#bbb7a9
Protanopia
#a7a8ac
Deuteranopia
#00c6bb
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
2.21:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon Black
9.48:1

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
##2AC3AA
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3749 0.7537 0.6696)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.127

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