Welcoming Slick Turquoise
Welcoming Slick Turquoise (#3DD4C3) 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 (173°, 64%, 54%) 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.
Etymology
Old English wel-cuman, well-coming — present-participle of welcome. As a color modifier, welcoming implies a clear-and-inviting-and-warm quality where the hue carries the visual register of cordial-and-hospitable color-tone. Sits at the crisp-and-cheerful end of the grid, parallel to hospitable and inviting in usage.
Old Norse slíkr, slick / smooth. As a color modifier, slick implies a wet-and-glossy quality, the visual register of oil-and-water-slick wet-and-glossy oil-and-water-slick reflective-surface slick-and-glossy-and-reflective surfaces under wet-oil-and-water-slick reflective-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to sleek and gloss in usage.
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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.