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Useful Aries Teal

#38bead
Notes

Useful Aries Teal (#38BEAD) is a true teal with an earthy character. It leans grounded and natural, the kind of color that plays well with wood, clay, linen, and warm neutrals. Its HSL profile (172°, 54%, 48%) 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
#38bead
RGB
rgb(56, 190, 173)
HSL
hsl(172, 54%, 48%)
HWB
hwb(172 22% 25%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.7% 0.116 182.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3870 0.7348 0.6788)
HSV
hsv(172, 71%, 75%)
LAB
lab(69.95% -39.45 -1.80)
LCH
lch(69.95% 39.49 182.61)
CMYK
cmyk(71%, 0%, 9%, 25%)

Etymology

Useful
adjective

Latin ūsus, use — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, useful implies a clear-and-purpose-serving quality where the hue carries the visual register of helpful-and-supporting design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to practical and serviceable in usage.

Aries
modifier

Latin aries, ram-of-the-fleece. As a color modifier, aries implies a ram-and-fire-sign-and-Mars-ruled-cardinal-fire quality, the visual register of Babylonian-ram-and-Greek-Aries hand-ram-and-fire-sign-and-Mars-ruled-cardinal-fire Babylonian-ram-and-Greek-Aries-and-Golden-Fleece aries-and-ram-and-fire-sign surfaces under Babylonian-ram-and-Greek-Aries-and-Golden-Fleece spring-equinox-and-March-and-April fire-sign-light. Sits at the modifier-and-zodiac end of the grid, parallel to taurus and gemini in usage.

Teal
noun

Anas crecca, the small dabbling duck whose male in breeding plumage sports a chestnut head crossed by a glossy green-blue stripe. The color refers to that stripe — the iridescent panel just behind the eye: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical depth of structural color rather than pigment. Cooler than cypress, warmer than cerulean, with the ornithological specificity of a color named for one feather of one bird.

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.

#38bead
Original
#b5b3ac
Protanopia
#a2a5af
Deuteranopia
#00c2b9
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
2.30:1
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
9.14:1

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
##38BEAD
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3870 0.7348 0.6788)
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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