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Earnest Gin

#4e5cb6
Notes

Earnest Gin (#4E5CB6) is a true blue 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 (232°, 42%, 51%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#4e5cb6
RGB
rgb(78, 92, 182)
HSL
hsl(232, 42%, 51%)
HWB
hwb(232 31% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(51.0% 0.142 273.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3165 0.3591 0.6908)
HSV
hsv(232, 57%, 71%)
LAB
lab(42.23% 21.64 -49.54)
LCH
lch(42.23% 54.06 293.60)
CMYK
cmyk(57%, 49%, 0%, 29%)

Etymology

Earnest
adjective

Old English eornost, seriousness, zeal. Used as a color modifier since the nineteenth century for hues that read as committed but unshowy — the working blues of denim, the deep greens of Quaker meetinghouses. Sits in the bold-and-quiet corner of the grid, slightly less luminous than resolute and slightly less institutional than imperial.

Gin
noun

The juniper-flavored distilled spirit — and the saturated deep blue of Bombay Sapphire-bottle glass and Hendrick's-style apothecary-style packaging. Gin color refers to a fresh-poured gin bottle in a bar light: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the high gloss of dyed glass.

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.

#4e5cb6
Original
#2f68b9
Protanopia
#1f5fb4
Deuteranopia
#0c7080
Tritanopia
#606060
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).
AAon White
5.95:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AA Largeon Black
3.53:1

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
##4E5CB6
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3165 0.3591 0.6908)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.142

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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