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Pressed Suave Turquoise

#39aebd
Notes

Pressed Suave Turquoise (#39AEBD) is a true cyan 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 (187°, 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
#39aebd
RGB
rgb(57, 174, 189)
HSL
hsl(187, 54%, 48%)
HWB
hwb(187 22% 26%)
OKLCH
oklch(69.3% 0.103 207.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3636 0.6731 0.7318)
HSV
hsv(187, 70%, 74%)
LAB
lab(65.60% -27.14 -17.11)
LCH
lch(65.60% 32.08 212.22)
CMYK
cmyk(70%, 8%, 0%, 26%)

Etymology

Pressed
adjective

Latin pressāre, to press — past-participle of press. As a color modifier, pressed implies a clear-and-smoothed-and-flattened quality, the crisp color of Mid-Century-Modern freshly-pressed-shirt-and-trouser ironed-textile finish. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to ironed and starched in usage.

Suave
modifier

French suave, smooth / sweet. As a color modifier, suave implies a smooth-and-polished-and-elegant quality, the visual register of Belle-Époque-and-Mid-Century-Modern polished-and-elegant-and-smooth Belle-Époque-and-Mid-Century-Modern interior-decoration smooth-and-polished surfaces under Belle-Époque-and-Mid-Century-Modern smooth-and-polished elegance light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to sleek and gloss 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.

#39aebd
Original
#9fa7be
Protanopia
#8c99bd
Deuteranopia
#00b6b2
Tritanopia
#969696
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
2.64:1
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
7.96:1

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
##39AEBD
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3636 0.6731 0.7318)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.103

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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