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Drafted Zeus Turquoise

#51abd6
Notes

Drafted Zeus Turquoise (#51ABD6) 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 (199°, 62%, 58%) 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 orange. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#51abd6
RGB
rgb(81, 171, 214)
HSL
hsl(199, 62%, 58%)
HWB
hwb(199 32% 16%)
OKLCH
oklch(70.4% 0.106 231.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4100 0.6625 0.8228)
HSV
hsv(199, 62%, 84%)
LAB
lab(66.31% -14.02 -29.80)
LCH
lch(66.31% 32.94 244.81)
CMYK
cmyk(62%, 20%, 0%, 16%)

Etymology

Drafted
adjective

Old English draht, draft — past-participle of draft. As a color modifier, drafted implies a clear-and-line-and-measured quality, the crisp color of Mid-Century-Modern hand-drafted architectural-and-engineering studio-drawing precision-tool-rendered lines. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to drawn and plotted in usage.

Zeus
modifier

Greek Ζεύς, king-of-the-Olympian-gods. As a color modifier, zeus implies a thunderbolt-and-king-of-gods-and-Olympian quality, the visual register of Olympian-Zeus-and-Phidias-Pheidias-statue hand-thunderbolt-and-king-of-gods-and-Olympian Olympian-Zeus-and-Phidias-statue-and-Mount-Olympus zeus-and-thunderbolt-and-king-of-gods-and-Olympian surfaces under Olympian-Zeus-and-Phidias-statue-and-Mount-Olympus Pheidias-chryselephantine-and-Olympia thunder-cloud-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to hera and atlas in usage.

Turquoise
noun

The hydrated copper-aluminum phosphate mined in Persia and the American Southwest for thousands of years — the firuze of Iran, the chalchihuitl of Mesoamerica, the heart of Pueblo and Navajo silverwork. The color refers to a fine Sleeping Beauty turquoise from Arizona: a saturated, slightly green-shifted blue with the slight matrix of host-rock veining. Brighter than persian, lighter than cerulean.

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.

#51abd6
Original
#96a9d8
Protanopia
#839bd5
Deuteranopia
#00b7b9
Tritanopia
#9b9b9b
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
2.58:1
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
8.15:1

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
##51ABD6
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4100 0.6625 0.8228)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.106

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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