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Trustworthy Hoar Lagoon

#38bed9
Notes

Trustworthy Hoar Lagoon (#38BED9) 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 (190°, 68%, 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
#38bed9
RGB
rgb(56, 190, 217)
HSL
hsl(190, 68%, 54%)
HWB
hwb(190 22% 15%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.2% 0.117 214.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3870 0.7348 0.8377)
HSV
hsv(190, 74%, 85%)
LAB
lab(71.33% -26.57 -23.79)
LCH
lch(71.33% 35.67 221.84)
CMYK
cmyk(74%, 12%, 0%, 15%)

Etymology

Trustworthy
adjective

Old English trēow, trust — adjectival suffix -worthy. As a color modifier, trustworthy implies a clear-and-reliable-and-honest quality where the hue carries the visual register of confidence-deserving-and-faithful-performance design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to reliable and dependable in usage.

Hoar
modifier

Old English hār, grey-with-age-or-hoar-frost. As a color modifier, hoar implies a grey-aged-and-hoar-frosted quality, the visual register of English-meadow-and-hedgerow-hoar hand-grey-aged-and-hoar-frosted English-meadow-and-hedgerow-hoar-and-frosted-pasture hoar-and-grey-aged-and-hoar-frosted surfaces under English-meadow-and-hedgerow-hoar-and-frosted-pasture Cotswold-and-Yorkshire-Dales-frost-pasture frosted-meadow-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to rime and sleet 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.

#38bed9
Original
#abb8db
Protanopia
#95a8d9
Deuteranopia
#00c8c6
Tritanopia
#a3a3a3
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
2.20:1
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
9.54:1

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
##38BED9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3870 0.7348 0.8377)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.117

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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