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Flashing Pondweed

#33caa9
Notes

Flashing Pondweed (#33CAA9) is a true teal 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 (167°, 60%, 50%) 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
#33caa9
RGB
rgb(51, 202, 169)
HSL
hsl(167, 60%, 50%)
HWB
hwb(167 20% 21%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.4% 0.132 174.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3989 0.7810 0.6686)
HSV
hsv(167, 75%, 79%)
LAB
lab(73.42% -46.35 5.41)
LCH
lch(73.42% 46.66 173.34)
CMYK
cmyk(75%, 0%, 16%, 21%)

Etymology

Flashing
adjective

Old English flasch, flash — present-participle of flash. As a color modifier, flashing implies a saturated-and-rapid-on-off quality, the bright color of emergency-vehicle and photographic-flash light-burst surfaces. Sits at the bright-and-flashing end of the grid, parallel to coruscating and flickering in usage.

Pondweed
noun

The genus Potamogeton — submerged aquatic plants of freshwater ponds and slow streams. The color refers to a clump of fresh pondweed seen through pond water: a soft, slightly cool deep yellow-green-blue with the optical complexity of submerged leaf scattering filtered sunlight.

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.

#33caa9
Original
#c3bda7
Protanopia
#afaeab
Deuteranopia
#00ccc0
Tritanopia
#a8a8a8
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
2.07:1
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
10.16:1

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
##33CAA9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3989 0.7810 0.6686)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.132

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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