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Plumb Tart Lagoon

#56bac0
Notes

Plumb Tart Lagoon (#56BAC0) 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 (183°, 46%, 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
#56bac0
RGB
rgb(86, 186, 192)
HSL
hsl(183, 46%, 55%)
HWB
hwb(183 34% 25%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.2% 0.093 200.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4413 0.7205 0.7465)
HSV
hsv(183, 55%, 75%)
LAB
lab(70.11% -27.31 -11.90)
LCH
lch(70.11% 29.79 203.55)
CMYK
cmyk(55%, 3%, 0%, 25%)

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.

Tart
modifier

Old English teart, sharp-or-acid-tasting. As a color modifier, tart implies a sharp-acid-and-fruit-puckered quality, the visual register of Bramley-apple-and-rhubarb-tart hand-sharp-acid-and-fruit-puckered Bramley-apple-and-rhubarb-tart-and-Yorkshire-orchard tart-and-sharp-acid-and-fruit-puckered surfaces under Bramley-apple-and-rhubarb-tart-and-Yorkshire-orchard Yorkshire-orchard-and-Kentish-Garden-of-England puckered-orchard-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to sour and tang in usage.

Lagoon
noun

A shallow body of saltwater partially or fully enclosed by a barrier — coral atoll lagoons in the Pacific, Venice's Laguna Veneta, the Florida Keys' backcountry. The color refers to the average reflectance of a calm tropical lagoon at midday: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical clarity of shallow water over white sand. Brighter than reef, cooler than aquamarine, with the postcard weight of a Pacific atoll seen from above.

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.

#56bac0
Original
#aeb3c1
Protanopia
#9da6c1
Deuteranopia
#00c0bc
Tritanopia
#a5a5a5
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
2.29:1
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
9.18:1

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
##56BAC0
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4413 0.7205 0.7465)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.093

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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