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Tidy Salve Verdigris

#48bab9
Notes

Tidy Salve Verdigris (#48BAB9) 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 (179°, 45%, 51%) 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
#48bab9
RGB
rgb(72, 186, 185)
HSL
hsl(179, 45%, 51%)
HWB
hwb(179 28% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.5% 0.102 194.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4107 0.7199 0.7209)
HSV
hsv(179, 61%, 73%)
LAB
lab(69.47% -31.84 -9.06)
LCH
lch(69.47% 33.10 195.88)
CMYK
cmyk(61%, 0%, 1%, 27%)

Etymology

Tidy
adjective

Old English tidig, timely — drifted in modern English to mean neat, orderly. Used as a color modifier for hues that read as composed and unfussy. Tidy beige, tidy gray: moderate saturation combined with optical neatness. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside plain and modest.

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.

Verdigris
noun

The basic copper carbonate that forms on weathered copper and bronze — the pigment scraped from oxidized metal and used in Renaissance painting before being supplanted by more stable greens. The color refers to a thick verdigris on aged copper roofing or the Statue of Liberty's surface: a soft, slightly muted blue-green with the powdery finish of mineral oxide. Cooler than patina, warmer than seafoam, with the archaeological weight of a mineral made by time.

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.

#48bab9
Original
#afb1b9
Protanopia
#9da4ba
Deuteranopia
#00bfb9
Tritanopia
#a2a2a2
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
2.33:1
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
9.00:1

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
##48BAB9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4107 0.7199 0.7209)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.102

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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