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Etched Bard Teal

#69adc4
Notes

Etched Bard Teal (#69ADC4) 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 (195°, 44%, 59%) 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 orange. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#69adc4
RGB
rgb(105, 173, 196)
HSL
hsl(195, 44%, 59%)
HWB
hwb(195 41% 23%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.1% 0.077 221.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4736 0.6717 0.7581)
HSV
hsv(195, 46%, 77%)
LAB
lab(67.18% -15.37 -18.44)
LCH
lch(67.18% 24.01 230.18)
CMYK
cmyk(46%, 12%, 0%, 23%)

Etymology

Etched
adjective

German ätzen, to etch — past-participle of etch. As a color modifier, etched implies a clear-and-precisely-incised quality, the crisp color of Rembrandt-and-Dürer hand-pulled etching-print fine-line incised-image. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to engraved and inscribed in usage.

Bard
modifier

Welsh bardd, poet. As a color modifier, bard implies a Welsh-and-Irish-poet-and-storyteller quality, the visual register of Welsh-Eisteddfod-and-Irish-Bardic hand-spoken poet-and-harp-and-eisteddfod oral-tradition Celtic-bardic surfaces under Welsh-Eisteddfod-and-Irish-Bardic hand-spoken-poet-and-harp oral-tradition Celtic-bardic gathering light. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to druid and celtic 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.

#69adc4
Original
#9faac5
Protanopia
#929fc4
Deuteranopia
#3db5b4
Tritanopia
#a0a0a0
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
2.51:1
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
8.38:1

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
##69ADC4
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4736 0.6717 0.7581)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.077

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.

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