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Plumb Cloak Teal

#45bba7
Notes

Plumb Cloak Teal (#45BBA7) is a true teal 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 (170°, 46%, 50%) 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
#45bba7
RGB
rgb(69, 187, 167)
HSL
hsl(170, 46%, 50%)
HWB
hwb(170 27% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.1% 0.109 179.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4061 0.7237 0.6567)
HSV
hsv(170, 63%, 73%)
LAB
lab(69.18% -37.67 0.40)
LCH
lch(69.18% 37.67 179.39)
CMYK
cmyk(63%, 0%, 11%, 27%)

Etymology

Plumb
adjective

Latin plumbum, lead — referring to the lead-weighted plumb-line of pre-modern carpentry. As a color modifier, plumb implies a clear-and-vertical-true quality where the hue carries the visual register of gravity-aligned-and-perfectly-vertical surface. Sits at the crisp-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to level and squared in usage.

Cloak
modifier

Old Northern French cloque, bell-or-cape. As a color modifier, cloak implies a heavy-shoulder-mantle-and-bell-shaped quality, the visual register of Anglo-Saxon-and-medieval-cloak hand-heavy-shoulder-mantle-and-bell-shaped Anglo-Saxon-and-medieval-cloak-and-pilgrim-cloak cloak-and-heavy-shoulder-mantle surfaces under Anglo-Saxon-and-medieval-cloak-and-pilgrim-cloak Canterbury-and-Compostela-pilgrimage wool-cloak-light. Sits at the modifier-and-textile end of the grid, parallel to cape and cowl in usage.

Teal
noun

Anas crecca, the small dabbling duck whose male in breeding plumage sports a chestnut head crossed by a glossy green-blue stripe. The color refers to that stripe — the iridescent panel just behind the eye: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical depth of structural color rather than pigment. Cooler than cypress, warmer than cerulean, with the ornithological specificity of a color named for one feather of one bird.

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.

#45bba7
Original
#b3b0a6
Protanopia
#a2a4a9
Deuteranopia
#00beb5
Tritanopia
#a0a0a0
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
2.35:1
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
8.92:1

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
##45BBA7
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4061 0.7237 0.6567)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.109

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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