colors
Back to gallery

Steady Glassy

#48c9a4
Notes

Steady Glassy (#48C9A4) 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 (163°, 54%, 54%) 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
#48c9a4
RGB
rgb(72, 201, 164)
HSL
hsl(163, 54%, 54%)
HWB
hwb(163 28% 21%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.5% 0.125 170.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4328 0.7778 0.6510)
HSV
hsv(163, 64%, 79%)
LAB
lab(73.43% -44.09 8.19)
LCH
lch(73.43% 44.84 169.48)
CMYK
cmyk(64%, 0%, 18%, 21%)

Etymology

Steady
adjective

Old English stede, place, position — drifted to mean firm and unmoving. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as reliable rather than dramatic. Steady gray, steady green: moderate saturation combined with optical calmness. Sits in the crisp-bucket center alongside settled.

Glassy
noun

A descriptor for very calm water surface — used in maritime vocabulary for sea conditions when wind is below 1 knot and the surface reflects like polished glass. Glassy color refers to a glassy-calm tropical lagoon at dawn: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the mirror-finish optical complexity of unbroken 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.

#48c9a4
Original
#c3bca2
Protanopia
#b1afa7
Deuteranopia
#00cabe
Tritanopia
#ababab
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
2.07:1
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
10.17:1

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
##48C9A4
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4328 0.7778 0.6510)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.125

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