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Spick Polynesia

#56ad97
Notes

Spick Polynesia (#56AD97) 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 (165°, 35%, 51%) 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
#56ad97
RGB
rgb(86, 173, 151)
HSL
hsl(165, 35%, 51%)
HWB
hwb(165 34% 32%)
OKLCH
oklch(68.7% 0.091 174.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4245 0.6705 0.5958)
HSV
hsv(165, 50%, 68%)
LAB
lab(65.04% -31.69 3.28)
LCH
lch(65.04% 31.86 174.08)
CMYK
cmyk(50%, 0%, 13%, 32%)

Etymology

Spick
adjective

Old Norse spik-spakr, spike-new — sharing root with spic-and-span. As a color modifier, spick implies a clear-and-newly-cleaned quality where the hue carries the just-polished visual register of fresh-painted-and-fresh-cleaned surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to spotless and pristine in usage.

Polynesia
noun

The vast triangle of Pacific islands — Hawaii, New Zealand, Easter Island, and the islands between. Polynesia refers to the unifying lagoon-blue-green of Polynesian atolls: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the optical clarity of warm Pacific lagoon water across thousands of cultural-cousin atolls.

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.

#56ad97
Original
#a8a496
Protanopia
#9a9a99
Deuteranopia
#30afa6
Tritanopia
#999999
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
2.69:1
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
7.82:1

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
##56AD97
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4245 0.6705 0.5958)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.091

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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