colors
Back to gallery

Sanitary Age Ocean

#337b90
Notes

Sanitary Age Ocean (#337B90) 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 (194°, 48%, 38%) 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
#337b90
RGB
rgb(51, 123, 144)
HSL
hsl(194, 48%, 38%)
HWB
hwb(194 20% 44%)
OKLCH
oklch(54.6% 0.078 220.2)
HSV
hsv(194, 65%, 56%)
LAB
lab(48.11% -15.59 -18.04)
LCH
lch(48.11% 23.84 229.16)
CMYK
cmyk(65%, 15%, 0%, 44%)

Etymology

Sanitary
adjective

Latin sānitās, health — adjectival suffix -ary. As a color modifier, sanitary implies a clear-and-clean-and-medical quality, the crisp color of Bauhaus-and-Modern clinical-and-hospital interior-architecture white-tile-and-stainless-steel surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to hygienic and sterile in usage.

Age
modifier

Old French aage, period-of-life. As a color modifier, age implies a long-passage-of-time quality, the visual register of Bronze-and-Iron-and-Stone-Age multi-millennia archaeological-period age-and-epoch-marked surfaces under multi-millennia age-and-epoch-defining time-deep light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to era and eld 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.

#337b90
Original
#6e7891
Protanopia
#616e90
Deuteranopia
#008282
Tritanopia
#6d6d6d
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
4.80:1
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
4.38:1

Related Colors

Canvas