Faded Glacier
Faded Glacier (#557688) is a true azure 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 (201°, 23%, 43%) places it in the muted 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.
Etymology
The past participle of fade, to lose intensity. Used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that have lost their original saturation through exposure or age. Faded denim, faded rose: low saturation combined with the optical impression of time passed. Sits at the hushed-bucket alongside worn and aged.
A compressed mass of ice that has accumulated over decades or centuries — Alpine, Andean, Patagonian, polar. The color refers to the exposed face of a clean glacier where compression has driven out the air: a soft, very pale blue-green with the optical clarity of dense ice. Lighter than aqua, cooler than seafoam, with the high-altitude weight of a landform now retreating across most of the planet.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
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.