colors
Back to gallery

Drawn Mizu

#48a6b1
Notes

Drawn Mizu (#48A6B1) 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 (186°, 42%, 49%) 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
#48a6b1
RGB
rgb(72, 166, 177)
HSL
hsl(186, 42%, 49%)
HWB
hwb(186 28% 31%)
OKLCH
oklch(67.3% 0.089 205.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3826 0.6428 0.6865)
HSV
hsv(186, 59%, 69%)
LAB
lab(63.20% -24.28 -14.02)
LCH
lch(63.20% 28.03 210.00)
CMYK
cmyk(59%, 6%, 0%, 31%)

Etymology

Drawn
adjective

Old English dragan, to draw — past-participle of draw. As a color modifier, drawn implies a clear-and-line-and-mark quality, the crisp color of Old-Master-and-Modernist hand-drawn studio-and-life-class observational-drawing graphite-and-charcoal lines. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to etched and drafted in usage.

Mizu
noun

The Japanese word for water — used as a color word for the saturated pale blue of fresh spring water and the mizu-iro of traditional kimono linings. Mizu spans the cyan-blue boundary in Japanese color vocabulary. The color refers to fresh spring water in a Kyoto stone basin: a soft, slightly cool pale blue with the optical clarity of cold mineral water.

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.

#48a6b1
Original
#9aa0b2
Protanopia
#8994b1
Deuteranopia
#00aca9
Tritanopia
#939393
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
2.85:1
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
7.36:1

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
##48A6B1
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3826 0.6428 0.6865)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.089

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.

Related Colors

Canvas