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Engraved Bluegrass

#3ca497
Notes

Engraved Bluegrass (#3CA497) is a true teal 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 (173°, 46%, 44%) 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
#3ca497
RGB
rgb(60, 164, 151)
HSL
hsl(173, 46%, 44%)
HWB
hwb(173 24% 36%)
OKLCH
oklch(65.5% 0.097 183.6)
HSV
hsv(173, 63%, 64%)
LAB
lab(61.43% -32.83 -2.08)
LCH
lch(61.43% 32.89 183.62)
CMYK
cmyk(63%, 0%, 8%, 36%)

Etymology

Engraved
adjective

Old French engraver, to dig in — past-participle of engrave. As a color modifier, engraved implies a clear-and-precisely-cut quality, the crisp color of Albrecht-Dürer-and-Hogarth hand-pulled engraving-print fine-line incised-image. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to etched and inscribed in usage.

Bluegrass
noun

Poa pratensis, Kentucky bluegrass — the cool-season turf grass that dominates lawns of the American Northeast and Midwest. Bluegrass music takes its name from the same plant via Bill Monroe's bluegrass-state Kentucky band. The color refers to a fresh-mown Kentucky bluegrass lawn: a soft, slightly cool blue-green-gray with the matte finish of cropped grass.

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.

#3ca497
Original
#9c9b97
Protanopia
#8d9098
Deuteranopia
#00a7a0
Tritanopia
#8d8d8d
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).
AA Largeon White
3.02:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon Black
6.95:1

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