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Frank Meteor Kingfisher

#309cb2
Notes

Frank Meteor Kingfisher (#309CB2) 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 (190°, 58%, 44%) 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
#309cb2
RGB
rgb(48, 156, 178)
HSL
hsl(190, 58%, 44%)
HWB
hwb(190 19% 30%)
OKLCH
oklch(64.2% 0.100 214.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3196 0.6033 0.6872)
HSV
hsv(190, 73%, 70%)
LAB
lab(59.54% -22.67 -20.18)
LCH
lch(59.54% 30.35 221.68)
CMYK
cmyk(73%, 12%, 0%, 30%)

Etymology

Frank
adjective

From the Old French franc, free, sincere — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as direct and unhedged. Frank red, frank brown: moderate-to-high saturation combined with optical directness. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside direct and honest.

Meteor
modifier

Greek μετέωρος, suspended-in-air. As a color modifier, meteor implies a streaking-and-burning-and-shooting-star quality, the visual register of Perseids-and-Leonids-meteor hand-streaking-and-burning-and-shooting-star Perseids-and-Leonids-and-Geminids-meteor meteor-and-streaking-and-burning-and-shooting-star surfaces under Perseids-and-Leonids-and-Geminids-meteor August-and-November-and-December-night-sky shooting-star-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to comet and nova in usage.

Kingfisher
noun

The family Alcedinidae — particularly Alcedo atthis, the European common kingfisher whose iridescent turquoise-blue plumage gives the color its name. The color refers to a male European kingfisher's wing: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the iridescent satin finish of structurally colored feathers.

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.

#309cb2
Original
#8c97b3
Protanopia
#7a8ab2
Deuteranopia
#00a4a3
Tritanopia
#878787
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
3.22:1
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
6.52:1

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
##309CB2
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3196 0.6033 0.6872)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.100

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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