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Live Aquamarine

#3bcda9
Notes

Live Aquamarine (#3BCDA9) is a true teal 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 (165°, 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
#3bcda9
RGB
rgb(59, 205, 169)
HSL
hsl(165, 59%, 52%)
HWB
hwb(165 23% 20%)
OKLCH
oklch(76.3% 0.132 172.3)
HSV
hsv(165, 71%, 80%)
LAB
lab(74.48% -46.59 6.95)
LCH
lch(74.48% 47.11 171.51)
CMYK
cmyk(71%, 0%, 18%, 20%)

Etymology

Live
adjective

Old English libban, to live — used as a color word since the nineteenth century for hues that read as active or animate. Live wire, live color: the implication is luminance combined with the optical impression of internal motion. Sits in the bright-bucket center alongside vivid and vibrant.

Aquamarine
noun

An iron-tinged variety of beryl — the gemstone mined from pegmatite veins in Brazil, Madagascar, and the Pakistani Karakoram. Named for the Latin aqua marina, seawater. The color refers to a faceted Santa Maria aquamarine: a clean, slightly green-shifted blue with the gem's high refractive brilliance. Lighter than sapphire, deeper than seafoam, with the gem-trade specificity of a stone graded primarily for color depth.

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.

#3bcda9
Original
#c7c0a7
Protanopia
#b3b1ac
Deuteranopia
#00cfc3
Tritanopia
#ababab
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
2.00:1
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
10.49:1

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