colors
Back to gallery

Printed Neptune Teal

#2e8386
Notes

Printed Neptune Teal (#2E8386) is a true cyan with an earthy character. It leans grounded and natural, the kind of color that plays well with wood, clay, linen, and warm neutrals. Its HSL profile (182°, 49%, 35%) 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
#2e8386
RGB
rgb(46, 131, 134)
HSL
hsl(182, 49%, 35%)
HWB
hwb(182 18% 47%)
OKLCH
oklch(56.1% 0.080 198.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.2779 0.5067 0.5210)
HSV
hsv(182, 66%, 53%)
LAB
lab(50.14% -23.91 -9.11)
LCH
lch(50.14% 25.59 200.86)
CMYK
cmyk(66%, 2%, 0%, 47%)

Etymology

Printed
adjective

Latin premere, to press — past-participle of print. As a color modifier, printed implies a clear-and-impressed-and-multiplied quality, the crisp color of Marimekko-and-Liberty-of-London hand-or-machine-printed textile-and-paper pattern-design. Sits at the crisp-and-printed end of the grid, parallel to stamped and etched in usage.

Neptune
modifier

Latin Neptunus, Roman-god-of-sea-and-eighth-planet. As a color modifier, neptune implies a Roman-god-of-sea-and-deep-blue-eighth-planet quality, the visual register of Roman-Neptune-and-Voyager-2-deep-blue hand-Roman-god-of-sea-and-deep-blue-eighth-planet Roman-Neptune-and-Voyager-2-deep-blue-and-Trevi-Fountain neptune-and-Roman-god-of-sea surfaces under Roman-Neptune-and-Voyager-2-deep-blue-and-Trevi-Fountain Voyager-2-flyby-and-Trevi-Fountain deep-blue-planet-light. Sits at the modifier-and-zodiac end of the grid, parallel to uranus and saturn 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.

#2e8386
Original
#7a7d86
Protanopia
#6c7387
Deuteranopia
#008884
Tritanopia
#717171
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).
AA Largeon White
4.46:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon Black
4.71:1

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
##2E8386
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.2779 0.5067 0.5210)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.080

This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.

Related Colors

Canvas