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Plumb Pondweed

#75a49b
Notes

Plumb Pondweed (#75A49B) 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 (169°, 21%, 55%) places it in the muted 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
#75a49b
RGB
rgb(117, 164, 155)
HSL
hsl(169, 21%, 55%)
HWB
hwb(169 46% 36%)
OKLCH
oklch(68.2% 0.052 181.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4980 0.6381 0.6083)
HSV
hsv(169, 29%, 64%)
LAB
lab(63.92% -17.71 -0.41)
LCH
lch(63.92% 17.72 181.31)
CMYK
cmyk(29%, 0%, 5%, 36%)

Etymology

Plumb
adjective

Latin plumbum, lead — referring to the lead-weighted plumb-line of pre-modern carpentry. As a color modifier, plumb implies a clear-and-vertical-true quality where the hue carries the visual register of gravity-aligned-and-perfectly-vertical surface. Sits at the crisp-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to level and squared in usage.

Pondweed
noun

The genus Potamogeton — submerged aquatic plants of freshwater ponds and slow streams. The color refers to a clump of fresh pondweed seen through pond water: a soft, slightly cool deep yellow-green-blue with the optical complexity of submerged leaf scattering filtered sunlight.

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.

#75a49b
Original
#a09f9b
Protanopia
#97989c
Deuteranopia
#67a6a1
Tritanopia
#999999
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
2.79:1
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
7.54:1

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
##75A49B
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4980 0.6381 0.6083)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.052

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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