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Surveyed Santorini

#4aabb7
Notes

Surveyed Santorini (#4AABB7) 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 (187°, 43%, 50%) 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
#4aabb7
RGB
rgb(74, 171, 183)
HSL
hsl(187, 43%, 50%)
HWB
hwb(187 29% 28%)
OKLCH
oklch(68.8% 0.092 206.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3939 0.6622 0.7096)
HSV
hsv(187, 60%, 72%)
LAB
lab(64.96% -24.68 -14.70)
LCH
lch(64.96% 28.73 210.77)
CMYK
cmyk(60%, 7%, 0%, 28%)

Etymology

Surveyed
adjective

Old French surveer, to look upon — past-participle of survey. As a color modifier, surveyed implies a clear-and-measured-and-coordinated quality, the crisp color of Mason-Dixon-Line-and-Royal-Navy-Hydrographic scientific-and-cadastral land-and-sea surveying tradition. Sits at the crisp-and-mapped end of the grid, parallel to mapped and plotted in usage.

Santorini
noun

The volcanic Cycladic island — and the saturated blue of Santorini's caldera water and the cobalt-blue domes of Oia church. Santorini refers to the caldera at sunset: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the optical depth of volcanic-bottomed Aegean 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.

#4aabb7
Original
#9ea5b8
Protanopia
#8d98b7
Deuteranopia
#00b2ae
Tritanopia
#979797
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
2.69:1
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
7.80:1

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
##4AABB7
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3939 0.6622 0.7096)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.092

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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