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Starched Tatar Lagoon

#38bcda
Notes

Starched Tatar Lagoon (#38BCDA) 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 (191°, 69%, 54%) 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
#38bcda
RGB
rgb(56, 188, 218)
HSL
hsl(191, 69%, 54%)
HWB
hwb(191 22% 15%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.8% 0.118 216.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3838 0.7271 0.8409)
HSV
hsv(191, 74%, 85%)
LAB
lab(70.78% -25.25 -25.19)
LCH
lch(70.78% 35.67 224.92)
CMYK
cmyk(74%, 14%, 0%, 15%)

Etymology

Starched
adjective

Old English stercan, to stiffen — past-participle of starch. As a color modifier, starched implies a clear-and-stiff-and-formal quality, the crisp color of Edwardian-period formal-evening-shirt-and-collar starched-and-pressed dress-attire. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to pressed and ironed in usage.

Tatar
modifier

Mongolian Tatar, Tatar. As a color modifier, tatar implies a Kazan-and-Crimean-Khanate quality, the visual register of Tatar-Khanate-of-Kazan-and-Crimea Mongol-successor Central-Asian-and-Eastern-European hand-built Khanate-and-trading-city surfaces under Kazan-and-Crimean Tatar-Khanate post-Mongol-successor trading-and-fortress light. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to mongol and hun 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.

#38bcda
Original
#a8b6dc
Protanopia
#92a6da
Deuteranopia
#00c7c5
Tritanopia
#a2a2a2
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
2.24:1
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
9.37:1

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
##38BCDA
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3838 0.7271 0.8409)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.118

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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