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Direct Tower Lagoon

#418f8f
Notes

Direct Tower Lagoon (#418F8F) 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 (180°, 38%, 41%) 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
#418f8f
RGB
rgb(65, 143, 143)
HSL
hsl(180, 38%, 41%)
HWB
hwb(180 25% 44%)
OKLCH
oklch(60.2% 0.076 195.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3358 0.5539 0.5572)
HSV
hsv(180, 55%, 56%)
LAB
lab(54.81% -23.75 -7.29)
LCH
lch(54.81% 24.84 197.06)
CMYK
cmyk(55%, 0%, 0%, 44%)

Etymology

Direct
adjective

From the Latin directus, straight — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as straightforward and unambiguous. Direct red, direct green: moderate-to-high saturation combined with optical clarity. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside clear and frank.

Tower
modifier

Latin turris, tower. As a color modifier, tower implies a tall-fortified-or-cathedral-tower quality, the visual register of Tower-of-London-and-Italian-bell-tower hand-built tall-fortified-or-bell-tower medieval-and-Renaissance-tower architectural surfaces under medieval-and-Renaissance tower-and-belfry monumental light. Sits at the modifier-and-architecture end of the grid, parallel to turret and keep 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.

#418f8f
Original
#87898f
Protanopia
#7a7f90
Deuteranopia
#00938f
Tritanopia
#7e7e7e
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
3.78:1
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
5.55:1

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
##418F8F
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3358 0.5539 0.5572)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.076

This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.

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