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Dependable Kin Lagoon

#45b5cd
Notes

Dependable Kin Lagoon (#45B5CD) 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°, 58%, 54%) 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
#45b5cd
RGB
rgb(69, 181, 205)
HSL
hsl(191, 58%, 54%)
HWB
hwb(191 27% 20%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.9% 0.105 214.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3973 0.7005 0.7920)
HSV
hsv(191, 66%, 80%)
LAB
lab(68.55% -24.02 -21.45)
LCH
lch(68.55% 32.20 221.77)
CMYK
cmyk(66%, 12%, 0%, 20%)

Etymology

Dependable
adjective

Latin dē-pendere, to hang from — adjectival suffix -able. As a color modifier, dependable implies a clear-and-trustworthy-and-consistent quality where the hue carries the visual register of consistently-performing-and-counted-on design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to reliable and trustworthy in usage.

Kin
modifier

Old English cynn, kindred. As a color modifier, kin implies a blood-relative-and-extended-family quality, the visual register of pre-modern-English-and-Anglo-Saxon hand-built family-hearth-and-meadhall-and-grandfather-clock blood-relation surfaces under Anglo-Saxon-and-pre-modern-English family-hearth-and-meadhall household firelight. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to clan and tribe 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.

#45b5cd
Original
#a4afce
Protanopia
#90a1cd
Deuteranopia
#00bebc
Tritanopia
#9f9f9f
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
2.40:1
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
8.74:1

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
##45B5CD
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3973 0.7005 0.7920)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.105

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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