colors
Back to gallery

Pressed Avalon Turquoise

#3bbccd
Notes

Pressed Avalon Turquoise (#3BBCCD) 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 (187°, 59%, 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
#3bbccd
RGB
rgb(59, 188, 205)
HSL
hsl(187, 59%, 52%)
HWB
hwb(187 23% 20%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.4% 0.111 207.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3889 0.7272 0.7936)
HSV
hsv(187, 71%, 80%)
LAB
lab(70.39% -28.92 -18.68)
LCH
lch(70.39% 34.42 212.86)
CMYK
cmyk(71%, 8%, 0%, 20%)

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.

Avalon
modifier

Old Welsh Afallon, island-of-apples-Arthurian-otherworld. As a color modifier, avalon implies an Arthurian-otherworld-and-island-of-apples quality, the visual register of Arthurian-Avalon-and-Glastonbury-Tor hand-Arthurian-otherworld-and-island-of-apples Arthurian-Avalon-and-Glastonbury-Tor-and-Morgan-le-Fay avalon-and-Arthurian-otherworld surfaces under Arthurian-Avalon-and-Glastonbury-Tor-and-Morgan-le-Fay Glastonbury-Tor-and-Somerset-Levels misty-otherworld-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to eden and helen 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.

#3bbccd
Original
#acb5ce
Protanopia
#97a6cd
Deuteranopia
#00c4c1
Tritanopia
#a2a2a2
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
2.27:1
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
9.26:1

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
##3BBCCD
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3889 0.7272 0.7936)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.111

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.

Related Colors

Canvas