colors
Back to gallery

Useful Term Mint

#5ad9be
Notes

Useful Term Mint (#5AD9BE) 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 (167°, 63%, 60%) 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
#5ad9be
RGB
rgb(90, 217, 190)
HSL
hsl(167, 63%, 60%)
HWB
hwb(167 35% 15%)
OKLCH
oklch(80.7% 0.119 176.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4926 0.8402 0.7489)
HSV
hsv(167, 59%, 85%)
LAB
lab(79.34% -41.56 2.81)
LCH
lch(79.34% 41.65 176.14)
CMYK
cmyk(59%, 0%, 12%, 15%)

Etymology

Useful
adjective

Latin ūsus, use — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, useful implies a clear-and-purpose-serving quality where the hue carries the visual register of helpful-and-supporting design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to practical and serviceable in usage.

Term
modifier

Latin terminus, boundary / period. As a color modifier, term implies a defined-period-and-boundary quality, the visual register of academic-and-court-term defined-and-bounded school-and-court-term scholarly-and-judicial period-marked surfaces under term-period bounded scholarly-and-judicial light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to span and phase in usage.

Mint
noun

The genus Mentha — peppermint, spearmint, apple mint, water mint — the cooling herb whose menthol gives it that quality at the molecular level. The color refers to fresh peppermint leaves before drying: a clean, slightly cool green with the matte finish of trichome-rich leaf surface. Lighter than basil, cooler than parsley, with the mojito-and-Pimm's association of a herb tied to summer drinks across two continents.

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.

#5ad9be
Original
#d1cdbd
Protanopia
#bebfc0
Deuteranopia
#00dcd1
Tritanopia
#bcbcbc
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
1.74:1
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
12.10:1

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
##5AD9BE
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4926 0.8402 0.7489)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.119

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