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Reliable Pool

#6ab2b6
Notes

Reliable Pool (#6AB2B6) 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 (183°, 34%, 56%) 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
#6ab2b6
RGB
rgb(106, 178, 182)
HSL
hsl(183, 34%, 56%)
HWB
hwb(183 42% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.8% 0.072 200.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4818 0.6909 0.7088)
HSV
hsv(183, 42%, 71%)
LAB
lab(68.23% -21.46 -9.12)
LCH
lch(68.23% 23.32 203.02)
CMYK
cmyk(42%, 2%, 0%, 29%)

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.

Pool
noun

A constructed body of water — the residential or municipal swimming pool, almost universally lined with white plaster or pale tile that filters the water's color toward blue-green. The color refers to a sunlit pool at noon: a clean, slightly green-shifted light blue with the optical density of chlorinated water in a treated basin. Cooler than aqua, warmer than turquoise, with the suburban weight of mid-century leisure.

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.

#6ab2b6
Original
#a9acb6
Protanopia
#9ba2b6
Deuteranopia
#47b7b3
Tritanopia
#a3a3a3
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
2.43:1
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
8.66:1

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
##6AB2B6
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4818 0.6909 0.7088)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.072

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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