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Refreshing Salve Lagoon

#43bad4
Notes

Refreshing Salve Lagoon (#43BAD4) 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 (191°, 63%, 55%) 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
#43bad4
RGB
rgb(67, 186, 212)
HSL
hsl(191, 63%, 55%)
HWB
hwb(191 26% 17%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.3% 0.110 215.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4007 0.7197 0.8187)
HSV
hsv(191, 68%, 83%)
LAB
lab(70.22% -24.70 -22.74)
LCH
lch(70.22% 33.57 222.64)
CMYK
cmyk(68%, 12%, 0%, 17%)

Etymology

Refreshing
adjective

Old French refreschir, to make fresh again — present-participle of refresh. As a color modifier, refreshing implies a clear-and-cool-and-revitalizing quality, the crisp color of Cornish-coast and Hebridean-island fresh-sea-air-and-cool-water revitalization. Sits at the crisp-and-cool end of the grid, parallel to fresh and bracing in usage.

Salve
modifier

Latin salve, hail-or-be-well. As a color modifier, salve implies a Latin-greeting-and-Salve-Regina-and-Roman-salute quality, the visual register of Salve-Regina-and-Pompeii-salve hand-Latin-greeting-and-Salve-Regina-and-Roman-salute Salve-Regina-and-Pompeii-salve-and-Roman-doormat-mosaic salve-and-Latin-greeting surfaces under Salve-Regina-and-Pompeii-salve-and-Roman-doormat-mosaic Pompeian-mosaic-and-Marian-antiphon Roman-greeting-light. Sits at the modifier-and-Latin end of the grid, parallel to ave and pax 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.

#43bad4
Original
#a8b4d5
Protanopia
#93a5d4
Deuteranopia
#00c4c2
Tritanopia
#a3a3a3
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
2.28:1
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
9.21:1

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
##43BAD4
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4007 0.7197 0.8187)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.110

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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