Settled Court Kingfisher
Settled Court Kingfisher (#36A8B6) 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 (187°, 54%, 46%) 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.
Etymology
The past participle of settle, to come to rest — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as stabilized after a process. Settled green, settled brown: moderate saturation combined with optical permanence. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside steady and composed.
Old French cort, enclosed-yard. As a color modifier, court implies an enclosed-courtyard quality, the visual register of Inn-of-Court-and-Chinese-courtyard hand-built stone-and-tile-paved enclosed-and-formal courtyard-architecture surfaces under London-Inn-of-Court-and-Chinese-courtyard enclosed-formal architecture light. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to quad and yard in usage.
The family Alcedinidae — particularly Alcedo atthis, the European common kingfisher whose iridescent turquoise-blue plumage gives the color its name. The color refers to a male European kingfisher's wing: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the iridescent satin finish of structurally colored feathers.
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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.