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Folded Meteor Lagoon

#36bed5
Notes

Folded Meteor Lagoon (#36BED5) 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 (189°, 65%, 52%) 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
#36bed5
RGB
rgb(54, 190, 213)
HSL
hsl(189, 65%, 52%)
HWB
hwb(189 21% 16%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.0% 0.116 211.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3837 0.7347 0.8231)
HSV
hsv(189, 75%, 84%)
LAB
lab(71.15% -28.04 -21.89)
LCH
lch(71.15% 35.58 217.97)
CMYK
cmyk(75%, 11%, 0%, 16%)

Etymology

Folded
adjective

Old English fealdan, to fold — past-participle of fold. As a color modifier, folded implies a clear-and-creased-and-arranged quality where the hue carries the visual register of carefully-folded-and-neatly-arranged textile surface. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to pressed and trim in usage.

Meteor
modifier

Greek μετέωρος, suspended-in-air. As a color modifier, meteor implies a streaking-and-burning-and-shooting-star quality, the visual register of Perseids-and-Leonids-meteor hand-streaking-and-burning-and-shooting-star Perseids-and-Leonids-and-Geminids-meteor meteor-and-streaking-and-burning-and-shooting-star surfaces under Perseids-and-Leonids-and-Geminids-meteor August-and-November-and-December-night-sky shooting-star-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to comet and nova 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.

#36bed5
Original
#acb7d6
Protanopia
#96a7d5
Deuteranopia
#00c8c5
Tritanopia
#a3a3a3
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
2.21:1
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
9.48:1

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
##36BED5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3837 0.7347 0.8231)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.116

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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