Pleasant Noon Lagoon

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.

Latin nona-hora, ninth-hour. As a color modifier, noon implies a midday-and-overhead-sun quality, the visual register of Mediterranean-and-Provençal high-noon vertical-shadow-and-strong-light bleached-and-clear-cast surfaces under high-noon overhead light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to day and morn in usage.

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.