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Pragmatic Bell Lagoon

#36b0c9
Notes

Pragmatic Bell Lagoon (#36B0C9) is a true cyan 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 (190°, 58%, 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
#36b0c9
RGB
rgb(54, 176, 201)
HSL
hsl(190, 58%, 50%)
HWB
hwb(190 21% 21%)
OKLCH
oklch(70.2% 0.109 214.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3614 0.6807 0.7760)
HSV
hsv(190, 73%, 79%)
LAB
lab(66.56% -24.81 -22.31)
LCH
lch(66.56% 33.37 221.96)
CMYK
cmyk(73%, 12%, 0%, 21%)

Etymology

Pragmatic
adjective

Greek pragmatikós, of business / practical — adjectival suffix -ic. As a color modifier, pragmatic implies a clear-and-purpose-fit-and-no-nonsense quality where the hue carries the visual register of straightforward-utilitarian-and-functional decision-making. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to practical and functional in usage.

Bell
modifier

Old English belle, bell. As a color modifier, bell implies a hour-marked-and-tolling quality, the visual register of English-and-Russian-bell-tower hour-marking-and-tolling cathedral-bell-and-bell-tower clock-and-time-marking surfaces under hour-marked-bell tolling-bell-tower light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to knell and hour 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.

#36b0c9
Original
#9eaaca
Protanopia
#8a9bc9
Deuteranopia
#00b9b8
Tritanopia
#989898
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
2.56:1
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
8.21:1

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
##36B0C9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3614 0.6807 0.7760)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.109

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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