colors
Back to gallery

Sure Indigobird

#5aa7b6
Notes

Sure Indigobird (#5AA7B6) 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 (190°, 39%, 53%) 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
#5aa7b6
RGB
rgb(90, 167, 182)
HSL
hsl(190, 39%, 53%)
HWB
hwb(190 35% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(68.5% 0.079 211.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4271 0.6476 0.7054)
HSV
hsv(190, 51%, 71%)
LAB
lab(64.31% -19.63 -15.06)
LCH
lch(64.31% 24.74 217.51)
CMYK
cmyk(51%, 8%, 0%, 29%)

Etymology

Sure
adjective

Old French seur, certain — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as confident and stable. Sure red, sure blue: moderate saturation combined with optical commitment. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside steady and true.

Indigobird
noun

The genus Vidua — African parasitic finches whose males display saturated indigo-blue plumage in breeding season. The color refers to a male V. chalybeata (village indigobird) in breeding plumage: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the iridescent satin finish of structural feather color.

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.

#5aa7b6
Original
#9ba2b7
Protanopia
#8c97b6
Deuteranopia
#21aeab
Tritanopia
#989898
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
2.75:1
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
7.64:1

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
##5AA7B6
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4271 0.6476 0.7054)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.079

This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.

Related Colors

Canvas