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Ironed Spa

#6cb6ae
Notes

Ironed Spa (#6CB6AE) is a true teal 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 (174°, 34%, 57%) 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
#6cb6ae
RGB
rgb(108, 182, 174)
HSL
hsl(174, 34%, 57%)
HWB
hwb(174 42% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.6% 0.075 186.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4916 0.7065 0.6813)
HSV
hsv(174, 41%, 71%)
LAB
lab(69.25% -24.98 -3.18)
LCH
lch(69.25% 25.18 187.25)
CMYK
cmyk(41%, 0%, 4%, 29%)

Etymology

Ironed
adjective

Old English īsern, iron — past-participle of iron. As a color modifier, ironed implies a clear-and-smoothed-and-pressed quality, the crisp color of Mid-Century-Modern freshly-ironed-shirt-and-trouser dress-attire textile finish. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to pressed and starched in usage.

Spa
noun

A mineral-spring resort — named for the Belgian town of Spa whose iron-rich springs have drawn visitors since the sixteenth century. Spa color refers to a thermal spring pool at Saturnia in Tuscany: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the optical complexity of mineral-saturated water.

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.

#6cb6ae
Original
#afafae
Protanopia
#a2a5af
Deuteranopia
#4eb9b3
Tritanopia
#a6a6a6
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
2.35:1
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
8.94:1

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
##6CB6AE
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4916 0.7065 0.6813)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.075

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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