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Calm Eden Lagoon

#44b9d9
Notes

Calm Eden Lagoon (#44B9D9) is a true cyan with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (193°, 66%, 56%) 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
#44b9d9
RGB
rgb(68, 185, 217)
HSL
hsl(193, 66%, 56%)
HWB
hwb(193 27% 15%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.3% 0.112 219.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4011 0.7159 0.8367)
HSV
hsv(193, 69%, 85%)
LAB
lab(70.13% -22.50 -25.61)
LCH
lch(70.13% 34.09 228.70)
CMYK
cmyk(69%, 15%, 0%, 15%)

Etymology

Calm
adjective

Latin calma, heat of the day — paradoxically drifted in Italian to mean stillness. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as untroubled. Calm blue, calm gray: moderate saturation combined with optical quiet. Sits at the crisp-bucket near quiet and steady.

Eden
modifier

Hebrew ‘Ēden, garden-of-paradise. As a color modifier, eden implies a primal-paradise-and-garden-of-creation quality, the visual register of Genesis-Eden-and-Lucas-Cranach-paradise hand-primal-paradise-and-garden-of-creation Genesis-Eden-and-Lucas-Cranach-paradise-and-Northern-Renaissance eden-and-primal-paradise-and-garden-of-creation surfaces under Genesis-Eden-and-Lucas-Cranach-paradise-and-Northern-Renaissance Cranach-and-Bosch-and-Hieronymus primal-garden-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to avalon and bliss 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.

#44b9d9
Original
#a5b4db
Protanopia
#90a5d9
Deuteranopia
#00c4c3
Tritanopia
#a2a2a2
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
2.29:1
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
9.19:1

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
##44B9D9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4011 0.7159 0.8367)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.112

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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