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Stable Woven Turquoise

#38bacc
Notes

Stable Woven Turquoise (#38BACC) 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 (187°, 59%, 51%) 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
#38bacc
RGB
rgb(56, 186, 204)
HSL
hsl(187, 59%, 51%)
HWB
hwb(187 22% 20%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.8% 0.111 208.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3806 0.7193 0.7894)
HSV
hsv(187, 73%, 80%)
LAB
lab(69.69% -28.62 -19.18)
LCH
lch(69.69% 34.45 213.84)
CMYK
cmyk(73%, 9%, 0%, 20%)

Etymology

Stable
adjective

Latin stabilis, standing-firm — sharing root with stand. As a color modifier, stable implies a clear-and-firm-and-unchanging quality where the hue carries the visual register of resistant-to-modulation-and-fade pigmentation. Sits at the crisp-and-firm end of the grid, parallel to steady and settled in usage.

Woven
modifier

Old English wefan, to-weave. As a color modifier, woven implies a hand-loomed-warp-and-weft quality, the visual register of hand-loom-and-jacquard-loom hand-woven-and-loomed warp-and-weft hand-woven-and-loomed-textile surfaces under hand-woven-and-loomed-textile workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to spun and knit in usage.

Turquoise
noun

The hydrated copper-aluminum phosphate mined in Persia and the American Southwest for thousands of years — the firuze of Iran, the chalchihuitl of Mesoamerica, the heart of Pueblo and Navajo silverwork. The color refers to a fine Sleeping Beauty turquoise from Arizona: a saturated, slightly green-shifted blue with the slight matrix of host-rock veining. Brighter than persian, lighter than cerulean.

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.

#38bacc
Original
#a9b3cd
Protanopia
#95a4cc
Deuteranopia
#00c3bf
Tritanopia
#a0a0a0
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
2.32:1
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
9.06:1

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
##38BACC
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3806 0.7193 0.7894)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.111

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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