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Sanitary Glen Turquoise

#38d0c3
Notes

Sanitary Glen Turquoise (#38D0C3) 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 (175°, 62%, 52%) 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
#38d0c3
RGB
rgb(56, 208, 195)
HSL
hsl(175, 62%, 52%)
HWB
hwb(175 22% 18%)
OKLCH
oklch(77.8% 0.124 186.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4162 0.8043 0.7631)
HSV
hsv(175, 73%, 82%)
LAB
lab(76.00% -41.51 -4.85)
LCH
lch(76.00% 41.79 186.66)
CMYK
cmyk(73%, 0%, 6%, 18%)

Etymology

Sanitary
adjective

Latin sānitās, health — adjectival suffix -ary. As a color modifier, sanitary implies a clear-and-clean-and-medical quality, the crisp color of Bauhaus-and-Modern clinical-and-hospital interior-architecture white-tile-and-stainless-steel surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to hygienic and sterile in usage.

Glen
modifier

Scottish-Gaelic gleann, narrow valley between hills. As a color modifier, glen implies a sheltered-and-mossy quality, the visual register of Scottish-Highland deep-cut river-valleys with peat-water-and-bracken hand-cut shieling-and-bothy crofting-life surfaces under Highland-and-overcast sky. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to vale and dell 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.

#38d0c3
Original
#c5c4c3
Protanopia
#b0b5c5
Deuteranopia
#00d5cc
Tritanopia
#afafaf
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
1.91:1
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
10.98:1

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
##38D0C3
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4162 0.8043 0.7631)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.124

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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