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Cool Meek Verdigris

#45a9a6
Notes

Cool Meek Verdigris (#45A9A6) 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 (178°, 42%, 47%) 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
#45a9a6
RGB
rgb(69, 169, 166)
HSL
hsl(178, 42%, 47%)
HWB
hwb(178 27% 34%)
OKLCH
oklch(67.6% 0.092 192.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3802 0.6542 0.6476)
HSV
hsv(178, 59%, 66%)
LAB
lab(63.67% -29.47 -7.17)
LCH
lch(63.67% 30.33 193.67)
CMYK
cmyk(59%, 0%, 2%, 34%)

Etymology

Cool
adjective

Old English cōl, of low temperature — used as a color modifier as the complement to warm. Cool gray, cool blue: the optical impression of a slight blue-green shift, even within otherwise warm or neutral hues. Sits across the crisp, hushed, pale, and neutral buckets.

Meek
modifier

Old Norse mjúkr, soft-and-gentle. As a color modifier, meek implies a hushed-and-self-effacing-and-quiet quality, the visual register of Beatitude-and-Quaker-meeting-meek hand-bowed-and-self-effacing-and-quiet Beatitude-and-Quaker-meeting-and-monastic-cloister meek-and-bowed-and-quieted surfaces under Beatitude-and-Quaker-meeting-and-monastic-cloister hush-and-bowed-vigil candle-lit-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to coy and mute 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.

#45a9a6
Original
#9fa1a6
Protanopia
#8f95a7
Deuteranopia
#00aea8
Tritanopia
#949494
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
2.81:1
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
7.48:1

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
##45A9A6
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3802 0.6542 0.6476)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.092

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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