colors
Back to gallery

Smooth Oasis

#56afa1
Notes

Smooth Oasis (#56AFA1) 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 (171°, 36%, 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
#56afa1
RGB
rgb(86, 175, 161)
HSL
hsl(171, 36%, 51%)
HWB
hwb(171 34% 31%)
OKLCH
oklch(69.5% 0.088 182.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4271 0.6782 0.6320)
HSV
hsv(171, 51%, 69%)
LAB
lab(65.91% -30.17 -1.00)
LCH
lch(65.91% 30.19 181.90)
CMYK
cmyk(51%, 0%, 8%, 31%)

Etymology

Smooth
adjective

Old English smōþ, level, polished — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as continuous without texture or break. Smooth tan, smooth gray: moderate saturation combined with optical evenness. Sits in the crisp-bucket alongside even.

Oasis
noun

A fertile spot in a desert — particularly the date-palm oases of the Sahara and Arabian peninsula. Oasis color refers to the unifying blue-green of a Saharan oasis pool surrounded by date palms: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the optical clarity of mineral-spring water.

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.

#56afa1
Original
#a8a6a0
Protanopia
#9a9ca2
Deuteranopia
#27b2ab
Tritanopia
#9b9b9b
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
2.61:1
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
8.04:1

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
##56AFA1
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4271 0.6782 0.6320)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.088

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.

Related Colors

Canvas