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Trustworthy Wend Turquoise

#2caab8
Notes

Trustworthy Wend Turquoise (#2CAAB8) is a true cyan 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 (186°, 61%, 45%) 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
#2caab8
RGB
rgb(44, 170, 184)
HSL
hsl(186, 61%, 45%)
HWB
hwb(186 17% 28%)
OKLCH
oklch(67.8% 0.106 206.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3355 0.6572 0.7125)
HSV
hsv(186, 76%, 72%)
LAB
lab(63.95% -28.32 -16.85)
LCH
lch(63.95% 32.96 210.75)
CMYK
cmyk(76%, 8%, 0%, 28%)

Etymology

Trustworthy
adjective

Old English trēow, trust — adjectival suffix -worthy. As a color modifier, trustworthy implies a clear-and-reliable-and-honest quality where the hue carries the visual register of confidence-deserving-and-faithful-performance design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to reliable and dependable in usage.

Wend
modifier

Old English wendan, to-turn-or-go. As a color modifier, wend implies a winding-and-turning-and-meandered quality, the visual register of pilgrim-path-and-river-wend hand-winding-and-turning-and-meandered pilgrim-path-and-river-and-Roman-road wended-and-winding-and-turning-and-meandered surfaces under pilgrim-path-and-river-and-Roman-road Camino-and-Pennine-Way-and-Kumano hilltop-pilgrim-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to drift and roam in usage.

Turquoise
noun

The hydrated copper-aluminum phosphate mined in Persia and the American Southwest for thousands of years — the firuze of Iran, the chalchihuitl of Mesoamerica, the heart of Pueblo and Navajo silverwork. The color refers to a fine Sleeping Beauty turquoise from Arizona: a saturated, slightly green-shifted blue with the slight matrix of host-rock veining. Brighter than persian, lighter than cerulean.

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.

#2caab8
Original
#9ba3b9
Protanopia
#8895b8
Deuteranopia
#00b2ae
Tritanopia
#909090
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
2.78:1
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
7.55:1

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
##2CAAB8
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3355 0.6572 0.7125)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.106

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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