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Tidy Limed Lagoon

#42b5cc
Notes

Tidy Limed Lagoon (#42B5CC) 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 (190°, 58%, 53%) 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
#42b5cc
RGB
rgb(66, 181, 204)
HSL
hsl(190, 58%, 53%)
HWB
hwb(190 26% 20%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.8% 0.106 213.6)
HSV
hsv(190, 68%, 80%)
LAB
lab(68.43% -24.77 -21.08)
LCH
lch(68.43% 32.53 220.39)
CMYK
cmyk(68%, 11%, 0%, 20%)

Etymology

Tidy
adjective

Old English tidig, timely — drifted in modern English to mean neat, orderly. Used as a color modifier for hues that read as composed and unfussy. Tidy beige, tidy gray: moderate saturation combined with optical neatness. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside plain and modest.

Limed
modifier

Old English līm, lime. As a color modifier, limed implies a lime-washed-and-whitened quality, the visual register of Andalusian-and-Mediterranean-limewashed hand-limed-and-whitewashed stone-and-stucco-and-timber Andalusian-and-Mediterranean-limewashed surfaces under Andalusian-and-Mediterranean lime-washed-and-whitened light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to mossed and pitted 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

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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.

#42b5cc
Original
#a4afcd
Protanopia
#90a1cc
Deuteranopia
#00bebc
Tritanopia
#9e9e9e
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
2.41:1
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
8.71:1

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