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Plainspoken Hera Lagoon

#37abc5
Notes

Plainspoken Hera Lagoon (#37ABC5) 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 (191°, 56%, 49%) 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
#37abc5
RGB
rgb(55, 171, 197)
HSL
hsl(191, 56%, 49%)
HWB
hwb(191 22% 23%)
OKLCH
oklch(68.8% 0.107 216.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3554 0.6614 0.7602)
HSV
hsv(191, 72%, 77%)
LAB
lab(64.94% -23.41 -22.57)
LCH
lch(64.94% 32.51 223.96)
CMYK
cmyk(72%, 13%, 0%, 23%)

Etymology

Plainspoken
adjective

English compound plain + spoken — past-participle of speak. As a color modifier, plainspoken implies a clear-and-direct-and-straightforward quality where the hue carries the visual register of unembellished-honest declaration. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to candid and direct in usage.

Hera
modifier

Greek Ἥρα, queen-of-the-Olympian-gods. As a color modifier, hera implies a peacock-feather-and-queen-of-gods quality, the visual register of Olympian-Hera-and-Argos-temple hand-peacock-feather-and-queen-of-gods Olympian-Hera-and-Argos-temple-and-Heraion-of-Samos hera-and-peacock-feather-and-queen-of-gods surfaces under Olympian-Hera-and-Argos-temple-and-Heraion-of-Samos Polyclitus-and-Argive-and-Samian peacock-throne-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to zeus and diana 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.

#37abc5
Original
#99a6c6
Protanopia
#8697c5
Deuteranopia
#00b4b3
Tritanopia
#949494
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
2.69:1
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
7.79:1

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
##37ABC5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3554 0.6614 0.7602)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.107

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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