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Plain Baldr Lagoon

#558e9a
Notes

Plain Baldr Lagoon (#558E9A) 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°, 29%, 47%) 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 red. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#558e9a
RGB
rgb(85, 142, 154)
HSL
hsl(190, 29%, 47%)
HWB
hwb(190 33% 40%)
OKLCH
oklch(61.2% 0.062 212.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3852 0.5512 0.5973)
HSV
hsv(190, 45%, 60%)
LAB
lab(55.69% -15.40 -12.22)
LCH
lch(55.69% 19.66 218.44)
CMYK
cmyk(45%, 8%, 0%, 40%)

Etymology

Plain
adjective

Latin planus, flat, level — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as undecorated and direct. Plain white, plain blue: moderate saturation, no shift, no surface effect. Sits in the crisp-bucket center, with the implication of restraint rather than absence.

Baldr
modifier

Old Norse Baldr, fair-and-shining-god-of-light. As a color modifier, baldr implies a fair-and-shining-god-of-light quality, the visual register of Norse-Baldr-and-Breidablik-hall hand-fair-and-shining-god-of-light Norse-Baldr-and-Breidablik-hall-and-mistletoe-fall baldr-and-fair-and-shining-god-of-light surfaces under Norse-Baldr-and-Breidablik-hall-and-mistletoe-fall Asgard-pantheon-and-Hel-descent fair-radiance-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to odin and freya in usage.

Lagoon
noun

A shallow body of saltwater partially or fully enclosed by a barrier — coral atoll lagoons in the Pacific, Venice's Laguna Veneta, the Florida Keys' backcountry. The color refers to the average reflectance of a calm tropical lagoon at midday: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical clarity of shallow water over white sand. Brighter than reef, cooler than aquamarine, with the postcard weight of a Pacific atoll seen from above.

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.

#558e9a
Original
#848a9b
Protanopia
#79829a
Deuteranopia
#359392
Tritanopia
#838383
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
3.67:1
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
5.72:1

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
##558E9A
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3852 0.5512 0.5973)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.062

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.

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