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Cool Gust Lagoon

#32bbdd
Notes

Cool Gust Lagoon (#32BBDD) is a true cyan with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (192°, 72%, 53%) 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
#32bbdd
RGB
rgb(50, 187, 221)
HSL
hsl(192, 72%, 53%)
HWB
hwb(192 20% 13%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.6% 0.121 219.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3726 0.7230 0.8515)
HSV
hsv(192, 77%, 87%)
LAB
lab(70.48% -24.45 -27.29)
LCH
lch(70.48% 36.64 228.14)
CMYK
cmyk(77%, 15%, 0%, 13%)

Etymology

Cool
adjective

Old English cōl, of low temperature — used as a color modifier as the complement to warm. Cool gray, cool blue: the optical impression of a slight blue-green shift, even within otherwise warm or neutral hues. Sits across the crisp, hushed, pale, and neutral buckets.

Gust
modifier

Old Norse gustr, sudden-burst-of-wind. As a color modifier, gust implies a sudden-burst-and-cliff-top-and-driven quality, the visual register of Cornish-cliff-and-Hebridean-gust hand-sudden-burst-and-cliff-top-and-driven Cornish-cliff-and-Hebridean-gust-and-North-Atlantic-front gust-and-sudden-burst-and-cliff-top surfaces under Cornish-cliff-and-Hebridean-gust-and-North-Atlantic-front Lizard-Point-and-Outer-Hebrides-and-Faroe-passage cliff-top-wind-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to zephyr and mistral 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.

#32bbdd
Original
#a6b6df
Protanopia
#8fa5dd
Deuteranopia
#00c6c6
Tritanopia
#a0a0a0
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
2.26:1
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
9.29:1

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
##32BBDD
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3726 0.7230 0.8515)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.121

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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