Gleaming Cornflower
Gleaming Cornflower (#569AFA) is a true azure 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 (215°, 94%, 66%) places it in the highly saturated band at a mid lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
The progressive participle of gleam, to shine intermittently. Used as a color word for hues with the slight optical motion of a polished or wet surface. Gleaming gold, gleaming red: the implication is luminance combined with the optical impression of specular highlight. Sits in the bright-and-glossy corner alongside lustrous.
Centaurea cyanus, the small wild blue flower of European cereal fields — once a weed of wheat agriculture, now nearly extinct in the wild after a century of herbicides. The color refers to a fully open cornflower in summer: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted blue with the spiky daisy structure of the Asteraceae. Cooler than periwinkle, warmer than cobalt, with the agricultural weight of a flower whose name is a synonym for blue in the Slavic and German textile trade.
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.