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Pleasant Throne Lagoon

#33bbde
Notes

Pleasant Throne Lagoon (#33BBDE) 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%, 54%) 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
#33bbde
RGB
rgb(51, 187, 222)
HSL
hsl(192, 72%, 54%)
HWB
hwb(192 20% 13%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.6% 0.122 219.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3741 0.7231 0.8552)
HSV
hsv(192, 77%, 87%)
LAB
lab(70.53% -24.02 -27.75)
LCH
lch(70.53% 36.70 229.12)
CMYK
cmyk(77%, 16%, 0%, 13%)

Etymology

Pleasant
adjective

From the French plaisant, pleasing — used as a color modifier since the fifteenth century for hues that read as agreeable, the kind of color that wears well over a long viewing without becoming demanding or fatiguing. Pleasant green, pleasant rose: moderate saturation combined with optical comfort. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside easy and calm.

Throne
modifier

Latin thronus, seat-of-state. As a color modifier, throne implies a king-and-queen-ceremonial-seat quality, the visual register of Russian-Imperial-and-Tudor-Court hand-carved jeweled-and-gilt-and-velvet ceremonial-seat-of-state surfaces under Russian-Imperial-Romanov-and-Tudor-Court hand-carved ceremonial-seat candlelight. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to crown and manor 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.

#33bbde
Original
#a5b6e0
Protanopia
#8fa5de
Deuteranopia
#00c6c6
Tritanopia
#a1a1a1
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
9.30:1

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
##33BBDE
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3741 0.7231 0.8552)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.122

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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