colors
Back to gallery

Printed Hard Lagoon

#3bc3e0
Notes

Printed Hard Lagoon (#3BC3E0) 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 (191°, 73%, 55%) 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
#3bc3e0
RGB
rgb(59, 195, 224)
HSL
hsl(191, 73%, 55%)
HWB
hwb(191 23% 12%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.8% 0.120 215.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4000 0.7542 0.8645)
HSV
hsv(191, 74%, 88%)
LAB
lab(73.11% -26.52 -24.87)
LCH
lch(73.11% 36.36 223.16)
CMYK
cmyk(74%, 13%, 0%, 12%)

Etymology

Printed
adjective

Latin premere, to press — past-participle of print. As a color modifier, printed implies a clear-and-impressed-and-multiplied quality, the crisp color of Marimekko-and-Liberty-of-London hand-or-machine-printed textile-and-paper pattern-design. Sits at the crisp-and-printed end of the grid, parallel to stamped and etched in usage.

Hard
modifier

Old English heard, firm / hard. As a color modifier, hard implies a stone-and-iron-and-bone quality, the visual register of hand-hard-and-firm stone-and-iron-and-bone hard-and-firm-and-resistant tactile-hardness-and-firmness surfaces under hard-and-firm tactile-hardness light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to forged and hewn 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.

#3bc3e0
Original
#afbde2
Protanopia
#98ace0
Deuteranopia
#00cecc
Tritanopia
#a8a8a8
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
2.09:1
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
10.07:1

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
##3BC3E0
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4000 0.7542 0.8645)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.120

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