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Easy Orion Verdigris

#40b3a9
Notes

Easy Orion Verdigris (#40B3A9) is a true cyan 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 (175°, 47%, 48%) 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
#40b3a9
RGB
rgb(64, 179, 169)
HSL
hsl(175, 47%, 48%)
HWB
hwb(175 25% 30%)
OKLCH
oklch(70.0% 0.103 186.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3844 0.6926 0.6612)
HSV
hsv(175, 64%, 70%)
LAB
lab(66.67% -34.29 -4.41)
LCH
lch(66.67% 34.57 187.32)
CMYK
cmyk(64%, 0%, 6%, 30%)

Etymology

Easy
adjective

Old French aisié, comfortable, at rest — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as visually undemanding. Easy beige, easy gray: moderate saturation combined with optical restfulness. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside calm and settled.

Orion
modifier

Greek Ὠρίων, hunter-of-the-myth. As a color modifier, orion implies a winter-hunter-and-belt-and-shoulder quality, the visual register of winter-Orion-and-Belt-of-Orion hand-winter-hunter-and-belt-and-shoulder winter-Orion-and-Belt-of-Orion-and-Bortle-1-sky orion-and-winter-hunter-and-belt-and-shoulder surfaces under winter-Orion-and-Belt-of-Orion-and-Bortle-1-sky January-and-February-winter-zenith winter-constellation-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to rigel and cygnus in usage.

Verdigris
noun

The basic copper carbonate that forms on weathered copper and bronze — the pigment scraped from oxidized metal and used in Renaissance painting before being supplanted by more stable greens. The color refers to a thick verdigris on aged copper roofing or the Statue of Liberty's surface: a soft, slightly muted blue-green with the powdery finish of mineral oxide. Cooler than patina, warmer than seafoam, with the archaeological weight of a mineral made by time.

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.

#40b3a9
Original
#aaaaa9
Protanopia
#999daa
Deuteranopia
#00b7b0
Tritanopia
#9a9a9a
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
2.55:1
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
8.24:1

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
##40B3A9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3844 0.6926 0.6612)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.103

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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