colors
Back to gallery

Surveyed Larimar

#4e8d9a
Notes

Surveyed Larimar (#4E8D9A) 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 (190°, 33%, 45%) 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
#4e8d9a
RGB
rgb(78, 141, 154)
HSL
hsl(190, 33%, 45%)
HWB
hwb(190 31% 40%)
OKLCH
oklch(60.6% 0.068 212.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3655 0.5469 0.5968)
HSV
hsv(190, 49%, 60%)
LAB
lab(55.07% -16.60 -13.19)
LCH
lch(55.07% 21.20 218.46)
CMYK
cmyk(49%, 8%, 0%, 40%)

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.

Larimar
noun

A blue variety of pectolite — a calcium-sodium silicate — found only in one mountain range in the Dominican Republic. Marketed as a gemstone since the 1970s and named after a Spanish word for the sea. The color refers to a polished larimar cabochon: a soft, slightly muted light blue with the cloudy translucency of pectolite. Lighter than aqua, warmer than glacier, with the gem-trade specificity of a stone that occurs in exactly one place 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 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.

#4e8d9a
Original
#83899b
Protanopia
#77809a
Deuteranopia
#249391
Tritanopia
#818181
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).
AA Largeon White
3.75:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon Black
5.60:1

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
##4E8D9A
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3655 0.5469 0.5968)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.068

This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.

Related Colors

Canvas