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Plumb Syrup Mint

#55c4b1
Notes

Plumb Syrup Mint (#55C4B1) is a true teal 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 (170°, 48%, 55%) 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
#55c4b1
RGB
rgb(85, 196, 177)
HSL
hsl(170, 48%, 55%)
HWB
hwb(170 33% 23%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.1% 0.105 180.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4525 0.7590 0.6957)
HSV
hsv(170, 57%, 77%)
LAB
lab(72.62% -36.25 0.01)
LCH
lch(72.62% 36.25 179.99)
CMYK
cmyk(57%, 0%, 10%, 23%)

Etymology

Plumb
adjective

Latin plumbum, lead — referring to the lead-weighted plumb-line of pre-modern carpentry. As a color modifier, plumb implies a clear-and-vertical-true quality where the hue carries the visual register of gravity-aligned-and-perfectly-vertical surface. Sits at the crisp-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to level and squared in usage.

Syrup
modifier

Arabic sharāb, thick-sweet-drink. As a color modifier, syrup implies a thick-and-amber-and-pourable-sweet quality, the visual register of Vermont-maple-and-Levantine-rose-syrup hand-thick-and-amber-and-pourable-sweet Vermont-maple-and-Levantine-rose-syrup-and-French-grenadine syrup-and-thick-and-amber surfaces under Vermont-maple-and-Levantine-rose-syrup-and-French-grenadine Vermont-sugar-shack-and-Damascus-souk amber-pourable-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to malt and zest in usage.

Mint
noun

The genus Mentha — peppermint, spearmint, apple mint, water mint — the cooling herb whose menthol gives it that quality at the molecular level. The color refers to fresh peppermint leaves before drying: a clean, slightly cool green with the matte finish of trichome-rich leaf surface. Lighter than basil, cooler than parsley, with the mojito-and-Pimm's association of a herb tied to summer drinks across two continents.

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.

#55c4b1
Original
#bcb9b0
Protanopia
#abadb3
Deuteranopia
#00c7be
Tritanopia
#ababab
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
2.12:1
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
9.92:1

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
##55C4B1
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4525 0.7590 0.6957)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.105

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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