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Buttoned Suave Teal

#5bdfd8
Notes

Buttoned Suave Teal (#5BDFD8) is a true cyan with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (177°, 67%, 62%) 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
#5bdfd8
RGB
rgb(91, 223, 216)
HSL
hsl(177, 67%, 62%)
HWB
hwb(177 36% 13%)
OKLCH
oklch(82.9% 0.115 190.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5032 0.8634 0.8436)
HSV
hsv(177, 59%, 87%)
LAB
lab(81.81% -37.50 -7.40)
LCH
lch(81.81% 38.22 191.16)
CMYK
cmyk(59%, 0%, 3%, 13%)

Etymology

Buttoned
adjective

Old French bouton, button — past-participle of button. As a color modifier, buttoned implies a clear-and-fastened-and-formal quality, the crisp color of Edwardian-period formal-attire fully-fastened-and-formally-dressed gentleman's-attire. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to trim and pressed in usage.

Suave
modifier

French suave, smooth / sweet. As a color modifier, suave implies a smooth-and-polished-and-elegant quality, the visual register of Belle-Époque-and-Mid-Century-Modern polished-and-elegant-and-smooth Belle-Époque-and-Mid-Century-Modern interior-decoration smooth-and-polished surfaces under Belle-Époque-and-Mid-Century-Modern smooth-and-polished elegance light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to sleek and gloss in usage.

Teal
noun

Anas crecca, the small dabbling duck whose male in breeding plumage sports a chestnut head crossed by a glossy green-blue stripe. The color refers to that stripe — the iridescent panel just behind the eye: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical depth of structural color rather than pigment. Cooler than cypress, warmer than cerulean, with the ornithological specificity of a color named for one feather of one bird.

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.

#5bdfd8
Original
#d3d4d8
Protanopia
#bec5d9
Deuteranopia
#00e5dc
Tritanopia
#c2c2c2
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
1.62:1
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
12.99:1

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
##5BDFD8
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5032 0.8634 0.8436)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.115

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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