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Stable Sodalite

#78bdc5
Notes

Stable Sodalite (#78BDC5) 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 (186°, 40%, 62%) 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
#78bdc5
RGB
rgb(120, 189, 197)
HSL
hsl(186, 40%, 62%)
HWB
hwb(186 47% 23%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.5% 0.070 205.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5320 0.7342 0.7664)
HSV
hsv(186, 39%, 77%)
LAB
lab(72.51% -19.67 -10.90)
LCH
lch(72.51% 22.49 209.00)
CMYK
cmyk(39%, 4%, 0%, 23%)

Etymology

Stable
adjective

Latin stabilis, standing-firm — sharing root with stand. As a color modifier, stable implies a clear-and-firm-and-unchanging quality where the hue carries the visual register of resistant-to-modulation-and-fade pigmentation. Sits at the crisp-and-firm end of the grid, parallel to steady and settled in usage.

Sodalite
noun

A sodium-aluminum silicate mineral — saturated blue, mined principally in Brazil, Russia, and Greenland. Sodalite is one of the four lazurite-group blue minerals (with lazurite, hauyne, and nosean). The color refers to a polished Brazilian sodalite cabochon: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the matte finish of opaque silicate.

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.

#78bdc5
Original
#b3b8c6
Protanopia
#a6aec5
Deuteranopia
#58c2bf
Tritanopia
#afafaf
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
2.12:1
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
9.88:1

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
##78BDC5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5320 0.7342 0.7664)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.070

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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