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Open Uranus Peacock

#55bbd6
Notes

Open Uranus Peacock (#55BBD6) 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 (193°, 61%, 59%) 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
#55bbd6
RGB
rgb(85, 187, 214)
HSL
hsl(193, 61%, 59%)
HWB
hwb(193 33% 16%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.2% 0.102 217.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4404 0.7244 0.8265)
HSV
hsv(193, 60%, 84%)
LAB
lab(71.09% -21.69 -22.45)
LCH
lch(71.09% 31.22 225.99)
CMYK
cmyk(60%, 13%, 0%, 16%)

Etymology

Open
adjective

Old English open, unobstructed — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as airy or uncrowded. Open blue, open green: moderate saturation combined with optical spaciousness, the slight visual breath of a hue that doesn't crowd the surface it covers. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside clear.

Uranus
modifier

Greek Οὐρανός, primeval-sky-god-and-seventh-planet. As a color modifier, uranus implies a primeval-sky-god-and-pale-cyan-seventh-planet quality, the visual register of Greek-Uranus-and-Herschel-discovery hand-primeval-sky-god-and-pale-cyan-seventh-planet Greek-Uranus-and-Herschel-discovery-and-tilted-axis uranus-and-primeval-sky-god surfaces under Greek-Uranus-and-Herschel-discovery-and-tilted-axis 1781-Slough-discovery-and-side-rolling-planet pale-cyan-planet-light. Sits at the modifier-and-zodiac end of the grid, parallel to neptune and saturn in usage.

Peacock
noun

Pavo cristatus, the Indian peafowl whose male displays the most elaborate sexual ornament in birds — a fan of two-meter eyespotted tail feathers in iridescent blue-green. The color is structural, not pigmented: created by interference patterns in the feather barbules. Peacock blue refers to the dominant body color: a saturated, slightly muted teal-blue with the optical depth of structural color. Cooler than persian, warmer than sapphire.

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.

#55bbd6
Original
#a9b6d8
Protanopia
#97a8d6
Deuteranopia
#00c4c3
Tritanopia
#a7a7a7
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
2.22:1
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
9.47:1

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
##55BBD6
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4404 0.7244 0.8265)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.102

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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