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Flat Sleet Teal

#3aa1c5
Notes

Flat Sleet Teal (#3AA1C5) 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 (196°, 55%, 50%) 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 orange. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#3aa1c5
RGB
rgb(58, 161, 197)
HSL
hsl(196, 55%, 50%)
HWB
hwb(196 23% 23%)
OKLCH
oklch(66.5% 0.107 225.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3459 0.6229 0.7579)
HSV
hsv(196, 71%, 77%)
LAB
lab(62.01% -17.78 -27.05)
LCH
lch(62.01% 32.37 236.69)
CMYK
cmyk(71%, 18%, 0%, 23%)

Etymology

Flat
adjective

Old Norse flatr, flat / level. As a color modifier, flat implies a clear-and-evenly-spread quality where the hue carries the matte-finish visual register of unmodulated single-plane surface. Sits at the crisp-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to level and even in usage.

Sleet
modifier

Middle English slete, icy-rain-or-snow-rain-mix. As a color modifier, sleet implies an icy-rain-and-half-frozen-and-driven quality, the visual register of North-Sea-and-Yorkshire-Moors-sleet hand-icy-rain-and-half-frozen-and-driven North-Sea-and-Yorkshire-Moors-sleet-and-Pennine-pass sleet-and-icy-rain-and-half-frozen surfaces under North-Sea-and-Yorkshire-Moors-sleet-and-Pennine-pass Yorkshire-Moors-and-Pennine-Way-and-Cleveland-Hills North-Sea-front-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to hail and rime 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.

#3aa1c5
Original
#8d9ec7
Protanopia
#7a90c5
Deuteranopia
#00acad
Tritanopia
#8e8e8e
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
2.96:1
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
7.08:1

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
##3AA1C5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3459 0.6229 0.7579)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.107

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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