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Settled Altair Lagoon

#49bcd5
Notes

Settled Altair Lagoon (#49BCD5) 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 (191°, 63%, 56%) 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
#49bcd5
RGB
rgb(73, 188, 213)
HSL
hsl(191, 63%, 56%)
HWB
hwb(191 29% 16%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.0% 0.108 214.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4156 0.7277 0.8229)
HSV
hsv(191, 66%, 84%)
LAB
lab(71.00% -24.51 -22.09)
LCH
lch(71.00% 32.99 222.03)
CMYK
cmyk(66%, 12%, 0%, 16%)

Etymology

Settled
adjective

The past participle of settle, to come to rest — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as stabilized after a process. Settled green, settled brown: moderate saturation combined with optical permanence. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside steady and composed.

Altair
modifier

Arabic al-nasr-al-tā'ir, the-flying-eagle. As a color modifier, altair implies a fast-spinning-and-summer-triangle quality, the visual register of Aquila-Eagle-and-Summer-Triangle-Altair hand-fast-spinning-and-summer-triangle Aquila-Eagle-and-Summer-Triangle-and-Bortle-1-sky altair-and-fast-spinning-and-summer-triangle surfaces under Aquila-Eagle-and-Summer-Triangle-and-Bortle-1-sky July-and-August-summer-vista white-stellar-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to vega and deneb 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.

#49bcd5
Original
#aab6d6
Protanopia
#96a7d5
Deuteranopia
#00c5c4
Tritanopia
#a5a5a5
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
2.23:1
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
9.44:1

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
##49BCD5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4156 0.7277 0.8229)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.108

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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