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Effective Twill Lagoon

#6a9dae
Notes

Effective Twill Lagoon (#6A9DAE) 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°, 30%, 55%) 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
#6a9dae
RGB
rgb(106, 157, 174)
HSL
hsl(195, 30%, 55%)
HWB
hwb(195 42% 32%)
OKLCH
oklch(66.6% 0.060 220.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4594 0.6103 0.6743)
HSV
hsv(195, 39%, 68%)
LAB
lab(61.85% -12.52 -14.21)
LCH
lch(61.85% 18.94 228.63)
CMYK
cmyk(39%, 10%, 0%, 32%)

Etymology

Effective
adjective

Latin effectīvus, productive — adjectival suffix -ive. As a color modifier, effective implies a clear-and-purpose-achieving quality where the hue carries the visual register of successful-task-completion design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to practical and useful in usage.

Twill
modifier

Old English twili, twill-weave. As a color modifier, twill implies a diagonal-weave-textile quality, the visual register of Harris-Tweed-and-Italian-gabardine-twill hand-woven-and-diagonal-twill wool-and-cotton-and-silk Harris-Tweed-and-Italian-gabardine-twill-textile surfaces under Harris-Tweed-and-Italian-gabardine hand-woven-twill workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to woven and quilt in usage.

Lagoon
noun

A shallow body of saltwater partially or fully enclosed by a barrier — coral atoll lagoons in the Pacific, Venice's Laguna Veneta, the Florida Keys' backcountry. The color refers to the average reflectance of a calm tropical lagoon at midday: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical clarity of shallow water over white sand. Brighter than reef, cooler than aquamarine, with the postcard weight of a Pacific atoll seen from above.

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.

#6a9dae
Original
#939aaf
Protanopia
#8892ae
Deuteranopia
#50a3a2
Tritanopia
#939393
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
2.98:1
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
7.05:1

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
##6A9DAE
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4594 0.6103 0.6743)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.060

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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