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Warm Arbor Lagoon

#2fb8d1
Notes

Warm Arbor Lagoon (#2FB8D1) 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 (189°, 64%, 50%) 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
#2fb8d1
RGB
rgb(47, 184, 209)
HSL
hsl(189, 64%, 50%)
HWB
hwb(189 18% 18%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.3% 0.116 213.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3631 0.7114 0.8070)
HSV
hsv(189, 78%, 82%)
LAB
lab(69.10% -27.08 -22.84)
LCH
lch(69.10% 35.43 220.15)
CMYK
cmyk(78%, 12%, 0%, 18%)

Etymology

Warm
adjective

Old English wearm, of moderate heat — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as containing red, orange, or yellow undertones. Warm gray, warm white: not necessarily a temperature, but the optical impression of a slight red-orange shift. Sits across the crisp and neutral buckets.

Arbor
modifier

Latin arbor, tree-or-trunk. As a color modifier, arbor implies a Latin-tree-and-vine-arbor quality, the visual register of Pliny-Natural-History-and-Roman-villa-arbor hand-Latin-tree-and-vine-arbor Pliny-Natural-History-and-Roman-villa-arbor-and-pergola arbor-and-Latin-tree-and-vine-arbor surfaces under Pliny-Natural-History-and-Roman-villa-arbor-and-pergola Pompeii-and-Tuscan-pergola-and-grape-arbor leafy-shade-light. Sits at the modifier-and-Latin end of the grid, parallel to via and domus 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.

#2fb8d1
Original
#a5b2d2
Protanopia
#90a2d1
Deuteranopia
#00c2c0
Tritanopia
#9d9d9d
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
2.36:1
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
8.90:1

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
##2FB8D1
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3631 0.7114 0.8070)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.116

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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