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Steady Bard Verdigris

#4bb5b3
Notes

Steady Bard Verdigris (#4BB5B3) 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 (179°, 42%, 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
#4bb5b3
RGB
rgb(75, 181, 179)
HSL
hsl(179, 42%, 50%)
HWB
hwb(179 29% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.2% 0.097 193.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4099 0.7008 0.6980)
HSV
hsv(179, 59%, 71%)
LAB
lab(67.87% -30.57 -8.12)
LCH
lch(67.87% 31.63 194.87)
CMYK
cmyk(59%, 0%, 1%, 29%)

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.

Bard
modifier

Welsh bardd, poet. As a color modifier, bard implies a Welsh-and-Irish-poet-and-storyteller quality, the visual register of Welsh-Eisteddfod-and-Irish-Bardic hand-spoken poet-and-harp-and-eisteddfod oral-tradition Celtic-bardic surfaces under Welsh-Eisteddfod-and-Irish-Bardic hand-spoken-poet-and-harp oral-tradition Celtic-bardic gathering light. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to druid and celtic 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.

#4bb5b3
Original
#abadb3
Protanopia
#99a0b4
Deuteranopia
#00bab4
Tritanopia
#9e9e9e
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
2.45:1
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
8.56:1

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
##4BB5B3
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4099 0.7008 0.6980)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.097

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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