colors
Back to gallery

Plumb Titan Teal

#5be4e3
Notes

Plumb Titan Teal (#5BE4E3) 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 (180°, 72%, 63%) 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
#5be4e3
RGB
rgb(91, 228, 227)
HSL
hsl(180, 72%, 63%)
HWB
hwb(180 36% 11%)
OKLCH
oklch(84.5% 0.118 194.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5104 0.8827 0.8846)
HSV
hsv(180, 60%, 89%)
LAB
lab(83.57% -36.88 -10.61)
LCH
lch(83.57% 38.37 196.05)
CMYK
cmyk(60%, 0%, 0%, 11%)

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.

Titan
modifier

Greek Τιτάν, primeval-Titan-or-Saturn-moon. As a color modifier, titan implies a Saturn-moon-and-methane-haze-and-primeval quality, the visual register of Saturn-moon-Titan-and-Cassini-Huygens hand-Saturn-moon-and-methane-haze-and-primeval Saturn-moon-Titan-and-Cassini-Huygens-and-Kraken-Mare titan-and-Saturn-moon-and-methane-haze surfaces under Saturn-moon-Titan-and-Cassini-Huygens-and-Kraken-Mare orange-haze-and-cryo-volcano-and-methane-lake outer-system-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to saturn and neptune 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.

#5be4e3
Original
#d6dae3
Protanopia
#c1cae4
Deuteranopia
#00ebe3
Tritanopia
#c7c7c7
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
1.54:1
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
13.65:1

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
##5BE4E3
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5104 0.8827 0.8846)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.118

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