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Iridescent Pegasus Sky

#2c9edd
Notes

Iridescent Pegasus Sky (#2C9EDD) is a true azure with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (201°, 72%, 52%) 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 orange. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#2c9edd
RGB
rgb(44, 158, 221)
HSL
hsl(201, 72%, 52%)
HWB
hwb(201 17% 13%)
OKLCH
oklch(66.6% 0.135 238.7)
HSV
hsv(201, 80%, 87%)
LAB
lab(61.83% -9.62 -40.72)
LCH
lch(61.83% 41.84 256.71)
CMYK
cmyk(80%, 29%, 0%, 13%)

Etymology

Iridescent
adjective

Latin Īris, rainbow — adjectival suffix -escent, named for the Greek goddess of the rainbow. As a color modifier, iridescent implies a saturated-and-multi-spectrum-shifting quality, the bright color of peacock-feather-and-soap-bubble structurally-colored-and-thin-film optical-interference patterns. Sits at the bright-and-shifting end of the grid, parallel to prismatic and holographic in usage.

Pegasus
modifier

Greek Πήγασος, winged-horse-of-myth. As a color modifier, pegasus implies a winged-horse-and-Great-Square quality, the visual register of Pegasus-Great-Square-and-winged-horse hand-winged-horse-and-Great-Square Pegasus-Great-Square-and-winged-horse-and-autumn-Pegasus pegasus-and-winged-horse-and-Great-Square surfaces under Pegasus-Great-Square-and-winged-horse-and-autumn-Pegasus October-and-November-autumn-zenith autumn-constellation-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to cygnus and draco 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.

#2c9edd
Original
#809ee0
Protanopia
#688edc
Deuteranopia
#00aeb4
Tritanopia
#8a8a8a
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
2.98:1
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
7.04:1

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