colors
Back to gallery

Useful Seth Ocean

#307d96
Notes

Useful Seth Ocean (#307D96) 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 (195°, 52%, 39%) 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
#307d96
RGB
rgb(48, 125, 150)
HSL
hsl(195, 52%, 39%)
HWB
hwb(195 19% 41%)
OKLCH
oklch(55.3% 0.083 223.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.2733 0.4837 0.5776)
HSV
hsv(195, 68%, 59%)
LAB
lab(48.88% -15.25 -20.39)
LCH
lch(48.88% 25.46 233.22)
CMYK
cmyk(68%, 17%, 0%, 41%)

Etymology

Useful
adjective

Latin ūsus, use — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, useful implies a clear-and-purpose-serving quality where the hue carries the visual register of helpful-and-supporting design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to practical and serviceable in usage.

Seth
modifier

Egyptian Set, god-of-storms-and-desert-chaos. As a color modifier, seth implies a desert-storm-and-chaos-god quality, the visual register of Egyptian-Seth-and-Ombos-temple hand-desert-storm-and-chaos-god Egyptian-Seth-and-Ombos-temple-and-Osirian-conflict seth-and-desert-storm-and-chaos-god surfaces under Egyptian-Seth-and-Ombos-temple-and-Osirian-conflict Western-Desert-and-storm-cloud red-desert-storm-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to horus and ptah in usage.

Ocean
noun

The body of saltwater that covers seventy percent of Earth's surface — a single connected mass divided by convention into Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Southern, and Arctic. The color refers to the average reflectance of mid-depth temperate ocean: a saturated, slightly green-shifted deep blue with the optical depth of a body of water that absorbs all light below the photic zone. Deeper than mediterranean, cooler than peacock.

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.

#307d96
Original
#6f7a97
Protanopia
#607096
Deuteranopia
#008585
Tritanopia
#6e6e6e
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).
AAon White
4.67:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AA Largeon Black
4.50:1

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
##307D96
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.2733 0.4837 0.5776)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.083

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