colors
Back to gallery

Wholesome Pegasus Lagoon

#33bad5
Notes

Wholesome Pegasus Lagoon (#33BAD5) 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 (190°, 66%, 52%) 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
#33bad5
RGB
rgb(51, 186, 213)
HSL
hsl(190, 66%, 52%)
HWB
hwb(190 20% 16%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.0% 0.117 214.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3725 0.7192 0.8221)
HSV
hsv(190, 76%, 84%)
LAB
lab(69.91% -26.39 -23.79)
LCH
lch(69.91% 35.53 222.03)
CMYK
cmyk(76%, 13%, 0%, 16%)

Etymology

Wholesome
adjective

An adjectival form of whole — used as a color modifier since the sixteenth century for hues that read as healthy and unadulterated. Wholesome cream, wholesome wheat: moderate saturation combined with the optical impression of a natural origin. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside genuine.

Pegasus
modifier

Greek Πήγασος, winged-horse-of-myth. As a color modifier, pegasus implies a winged-horse-and-Great-Square quality, the visual register of Pegasus-Great-Square-and-winged-horse hand-winged-horse-and-Great-Square Pegasus-Great-Square-and-winged-horse-and-autumn-Pegasus pegasus-and-winged-horse-and-Great-Square surfaces under Pegasus-Great-Square-and-winged-horse-and-autumn-Pegasus October-and-November-autumn-zenith autumn-constellation-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to cygnus and draco 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.

#33bad5
Original
#a7b4d7
Protanopia
#91a4d5
Deuteranopia
#00c4c2
Tritanopia
#9f9f9f
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
2.30:1
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
9.13:1

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
##33BAD5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3725 0.7192 0.8221)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.117

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