Placid Tide
Placid Tide (#4BD3F8) is a true cyan with a neon character. It sits at the high-saturation edge of its family. Use it sparingly, as signage, accent, or highlight against darker surfaces. Its HSL profile (193°, 93%, 63%) places it in the highly saturated band at a mid lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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.
Etymology
Latin placidus, gentle / quiet — derived from placēre (to please). As a color modifier, placid implies a clear-and-unruffled quality where the hue carries the visual register of mirror-smooth lake-surface in windless mid-morning. Sits at the crisp-and-calm end of the grid, parallel to serene and peaceful in usage.
The slow flow of seawater driven by lunar gravity — the daily cycle of high to low and back. Tidal and tide used as a color refer to the deep blue-green of coastal water at mid-tide on an overcast day: a soft, slightly muted blue-green with the optical complexity of water in motion. Cooler than reef, deeper than seafoam, with the ecological weight of a force that has shaped every coastline on Earth.
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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.