colors
Back to gallery

Easy Ophiuchus Lagoon

#4ab9d1
Notes

Easy Ophiuchus Lagoon (#4AB9D1) 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°, 59%, 55%) 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
#4ab9d1
RGB
rgb(74, 185, 209)
HSL
hsl(191, 59%, 55%)
HWB
hwb(191 29% 18%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.2% 0.105 214.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4134 0.7161 0.8076)
HSV
hsv(191, 65%, 82%)
LAB
lab(70.00% -24.04 -21.41)
LCH
lch(70.00% 32.19 221.69)
CMYK
cmyk(65%, 11%, 0%, 18%)

Etymology

Easy
adjective

Old French aisié, comfortable, at rest — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as visually undemanding. Easy beige, easy gray: moderate saturation combined with optical restfulness. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside calm and settled.

Ophiuchus
modifier

Greek Ὀφιοῦχος, serpent-bearer. As a color modifier, ophiuchus implies a serpent-bearer-and-thirteenth-sign-and-Asclepius quality, the visual register of Hellenic-Ophiuchus-and-Asclepius-serpent-bearer hand-serpent-bearer-and-thirteenth-sign-and-Asclepius Hellenic-Ophiuchus-and-Asclepius-serpent-bearer-and-Rod-of-Asclepius ophiuchus-and-serpent-bearer-and-thirteenth-sign surfaces under Hellenic-Ophiuchus-and-Asclepius-serpent-bearer-and-Rod-of-Asclepius autumn-and-November-and-December serpent-bearer-light. Sits at the modifier-and-zodiac end of the grid, parallel to scorpio and sagittarius 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.

#4ab9d1
Original
#a8b3d2
Protanopia
#94a5d1
Deuteranopia
#00c2c0
Tritanopia
#a3a3a3
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
2.29:1
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
9.15:1

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
##4AB9D1
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4134 0.7161 0.8076)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.105

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