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Plotted Baltic

#73ddfd
Notes

Plotted Baltic (#73DDFD) is a soft 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 (194°, 97%, 72%) places it in the highly saturated band at a light 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
#73ddfd
RGB
rgb(115, 221, 253)
HSL
hsl(194, 97%, 72%)
HWB
hwb(194 45% 1%)
OKLCH
oklch(84.6% 0.107 220.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5558 0.8569 0.9775)
HSV
hsv(194, 55%, 99%)
LAB
lab(83.15% -22.00 -24.93)
LCH
lch(83.15% 33.25 228.58)
CMYK
cmyk(55%, 13%, 0%, 1%)

Etymology

Plotted
adjective

Old English plot, small piece of ground — past-participle of plot. As a color modifier, plotted implies a clear-and-coordinate-mapped quality, the crisp color of Cartesian-and-graph-paper coordinate-plotted scientific-and-engineering data-visualization plot-line. Sits at the crisp-and-mapped end of the grid, parallel to mapped and surveyed in usage.

Baltic
noun

The northern European brackish sea between Scandinavia and the European mainland — the source of Baltic amber and the route of medieval Hanseatic League trade. Baltic color refers to mid-depth Baltic water at the Helsinki archipelago: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the optical complexity of low-salinity high-latitude inland sea.

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.

#73ddfd
Original
#c9d8ff
Protanopia
#b5c9fd
Deuteranopia
#00e8e7
Tritanopia
#c9c9c9
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
13.49:1

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
##73DDFD
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5558 0.8569 0.9775)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.107

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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