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Reliable Forum Ocean

#69defc
Notes

Reliable Forum Ocean (#69DEFC) 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 (192°, 96%, 70%) places it in the highly saturated band at a mid lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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
#69defc
RGB
rgb(105, 222, 252)
HSL
hsl(192, 96%, 70%)
HWB
hwb(192 41% 1%)
OKLCH
oklch(84.4% 0.113 217.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5330 0.8602 0.9739)
HSV
hsv(192, 58%, 99%)
LAB
lab(83.06% -24.66 -24.58)
LCH
lch(83.06% 34.82 224.90)
CMYK
cmyk(58%, 12%, 0%, 1%)

Etymology

Reliable
adjective

Latin re-ligāre, to bind back — adjectival suffix -able. As a color modifier, reliable implies a clear-and-trustworthy-and-consistent quality where the hue carries the visual register of dependable-and-consistent design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to dependable and trustworthy in usage.

Forum
modifier

Latin forum, open-space-of-Roman-city. As a color modifier, forum implies a Roman-and-civic-meeting-square quality, the visual register of Roman-Forum-and-Pompeii-Forum hand-built civic-meeting-square forum-and-basilica-and-rostrum Republican-and-Imperial-Roman architectural surfaces under Roman-Forum-and-Pompeii civic-meeting-square light. Sits at the modifier-and-architecture end of the grid, parallel to agora and stoa in usage.

Ocean
noun

The body of saltwater that covers seventy percent of Earth's surface — a single connected mass divided by convention into Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Southern, and Arctic. The color refers to the average reflectance of mid-depth temperate ocean: a saturated, slightly green-shifted deep blue with the optical depth of a body of water that absorbs all light below the photic zone. Deeper than mediterranean, cooler than peacock.

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.

#69defc
Original
#cad8fe
Protanopia
#b4c8fc
Deuteranopia
#00e9e7
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
1.56:1
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
13.45:1

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
##69DEFC
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5330 0.8602 0.9739)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.113

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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Canvas