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Peaceful Knot Lagoon

#40a7c7
Notes

Peaceful Knot Lagoon (#40A7C7) is a true cyan 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 (194°, 55%, 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
#40a7c7
RGB
rgb(64, 167, 199)
HSL
hsl(194, 55%, 52%)
HWB
hwb(194 25% 22%)
OKLCH
oklch(68.2% 0.104 222.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3668 0.6463 0.7667)
HSV
hsv(194, 68%, 78%)
LAB
lab(64.04% -19.43 -25.04)
LCH
lch(64.04% 31.69 232.19)
CMYK
cmyk(68%, 16%, 0%, 22%)

Etymology

Peaceful
adjective

Latin pāx, peace — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, peaceful implies a clear-and-restful-and-calm quality where the hue carries the visual register of Quaker-meeting-house still-and-meditative interior atmosphere. Sits at the crisp-and-calm end of the grid, parallel to serene and placid in usage.

Knot
modifier

Old English cnotta, knot. As a color modifier, knot implies a sailor's-rope-knot quality, the visual register of Royal-Navy-and-merchant-marine-knot hand-tied sailor's-rope-and-line bowline-and-figure-eight-and-clove-hitch maritime-rigging surfaces under tall-ship-and-frigate sailor's-knot-and-line working light. Sits at the modifier-and-nautical end of the grid, parallel to sheet and spar 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.

#40a7c7
Original
#94a3c9
Protanopia
#8195c7
Deuteranopia
#00b1b1
Tritanopia
#939393
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
2.77:1
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
7.57:1

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
##40A7C7
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3668 0.6463 0.7667)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.104

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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