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Functional Loki Teal

#72a5b9
Notes

Functional Loki Teal (#72A5B9) 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 (197°, 34%, 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
#72a5b9
RGB
rgb(114, 165, 185)
HSL
hsl(197, 34%, 59%)
HWB
hwb(197 45% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(69.3% 0.061 224.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4903 0.6417 0.7165)
HSV
hsv(197, 38%, 73%)
LAB
lab(64.95% -11.76 -15.66)
LCH
lch(64.95% 19.58 233.10)
CMYK
cmyk(38%, 11%, 0%, 27%)

Etymology

Functional
adjective

Latin fūnctiō, performance — adjectival suffix -al. As a color modifier, functional implies a clear-and-purpose-fit-and-utilitarian quality, the crisp color of Mid-Century-Modern and Bauhaus form-follows-function design-aesthetic. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to practical and utilitarian in usage.

Loki
modifier

Old Norse Loki, trickster-god-and-shape-shifter. As a color modifier, loki implies a trickster-and-shape-shifter-and-sly quality, the visual register of Norse-Loki-and-Asgard-trickster hand-trickster-and-shape-shifter-and-sly Norse-Loki-and-Asgard-trickster-and-Ragnarok loki-and-trickster-and-shape-shifter-and-sly surfaces under Norse-Loki-and-Asgard-trickster-and-Ragnarok Yggdrasil-and-Aesir-pantheon shape-shifter-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to thor and odin 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.

#72a5b9
Original
#9aa2ba
Protanopia
#8f9ab9
Deuteranopia
#57abab
Tritanopia
#9c9c9c
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
2.69:1
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
7.80:1

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
##72A5B9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4903 0.6417 0.7165)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.061

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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