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Plainspoken Prow Lagoon

#3dbbd9
Notes

Plainspoken Prow Lagoon (#3DBBD9) 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 (192°, 67%, 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
#3dbbd9
RGB
rgb(61, 187, 217)
HSL
hsl(192, 67%, 55%)
HWB
hwb(192 24% 15%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.6% 0.115 217.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3909 0.7234 0.8371)
HSV
hsv(192, 72%, 85%)
LAB
lab(70.55% -24.46 -24.98)
LCH
lch(70.55% 34.96 225.60)
CMYK
cmyk(72%, 14%, 0%, 15%)

Etymology

Plainspoken
adjective

English compound plain + spoken — past-participle of speak. As a color modifier, plainspoken implies a clear-and-direct-and-straightforward quality where the hue carries the visual register of unembellished-honest declaration. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to candid and direct in usage.

Prow
modifier

Old French proue, ship's-front. As a color modifier, prow implies a ship's-front-and-figurehead quality, the visual register of Royal-Navy-and-Tall-Ship-Prow hand-carved ship's-front-and-figurehead prow-and-cutwater-and-bowsprit maritime-architecture surfaces under tall-ship-prow-and-figurehead maritime-headway light. Sits at the modifier-and-nautical end of the grid, parallel to bow and hull 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.

#3dbbd9
Original
#a7b5db
Protanopia
#92a6d9
Deuteranopia
#00c5c4
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
2.26:1
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
9.31:1

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
##3DBBD9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3909 0.7234 0.8371)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.115

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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