colors
Back to gallery

Warm Thoth Turquoise

#38bbc7
Notes

Warm Thoth Turquoise (#38BBC7) 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 (185°, 56%, 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
#38bbc7
RGB
rgb(56, 187, 199)
HSL
hsl(185, 56%, 50%)
HWB
hwb(185 22% 22%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.8% 0.111 204.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3822 0.7232 0.7715)
HSV
hsv(185, 72%, 78%)
LAB
lab(69.83% -30.62 -16.24)
LCH
lch(69.83% 34.66 207.94)
CMYK
cmyk(72%, 6%, 0%, 22%)

Etymology

Warm
adjective

Old English wearm, of moderate heat — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as containing red, orange, or yellow undertones. Warm gray, warm white: not necessarily a temperature, but the optical impression of a slight red-orange shift. Sits across the crisp and neutral buckets.

Thoth
modifier

Egyptian Djehuty, ibis-headed-god-of-writing. As a color modifier, thoth implies an ibis-headed-and-scribe-and-moon-god quality, the visual register of Egyptian-Thoth-and-Hermopolis-temple hand-ibis-headed-and-scribe-and-moon-god Egyptian-Thoth-and-Hermopolis-temple-and-Hermes-Trismegistus thoth-and-ibis-headed-and-scribe-and-moon-god surfaces under Egyptian-Thoth-and-Hermopolis-temple-and-Hermes-Trismegistus papyrus-and-reed-pen-and-Hermopolis ibis-scribe-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to isis and horus 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.

#38bbc7
Original
#acb3c8
Protanopia
#98a4c7
Deuteranopia
#00c3be
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
2.31:1
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
9.10:1

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
##38BBC7
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3822 0.7232 0.7715)
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.

Related Colors

Canvas