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Candid Salve Teal

#45c3ad
Notes

Candid Salve Teal (#45C3AD) is a true teal 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 (170°, 51%, 52%) 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
#45c3ad
RGB
rgb(69, 195, 173)
HSL
hsl(170, 51%, 52%)
HWB
hwb(170 27% 24%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.2% 0.115 179.1)
HSV
hsv(170, 65%, 76%)
LAB
lab(71.76% -39.73 0.89)
LCH
lch(71.76% 39.74 178.72)
CMYK
cmyk(65%, 0%, 11%, 24%)

Etymology

Candid
adjective

Latin candidus, bright-white / honest — derived from candēre (to shine). As a color modifier, candid implies a clear-and-honest-and-direct quality where the hue carries the visual register of straightforward-honest declaration. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to frank and plainspoken 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.

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.

#45c3ad
Original
#bbb8ac
Protanopia
#a9aaaf
Deuteranopia
#00c6bc
Tritanopia
#a7a7a7
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
2.17:1
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
9.66:1

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