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Plain Lodge Lagoon

#46b6d5
Notes

Plain Lodge Lagoon (#46B6D5) 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 (193°, 63%, 55%) 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
#46b6d5
RGB
rgb(70, 182, 213)
HSL
hsl(193, 63%, 55%)
HWB
hwb(193 27% 16%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.5% 0.109 219.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4008 0.7044 0.8214)
HSV
hsv(193, 67%, 84%)
LAB
lab(69.15% -21.91 -24.91)
LCH
lch(69.15% 33.18 228.66)
CMYK
cmyk(67%, 15%, 0%, 16%)

Etymology

Plain
adjective

Latin planus, flat, level — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as undecorated and direct. Plain white, plain blue: moderate saturation, no shift, no surface effect. Sits in the crisp-bucket center, with the implication of restraint rather than absence.

Lodge
modifier

Old French loge, hut. As a color modifier, lodge implies a forest-shelter-and-hunting quality, the visual register of English-and-Scottish hunting-lodge-and-fishing-lodge timber-and-stone forest-and-moor remote-shelter surfaces under remote Highland-Hunting-lodge wilderness light. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to cottage and hut 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.

#46b6d5
Original
#a3b1d7
Protanopia
#8fa2d5
Deuteranopia
#00c0c0
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
2.36:1
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
8.91:1

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
##46B6D5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4008 0.7044 0.8214)
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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