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Engraved Baltic

#78e5f0
Notes

Engraved Baltic (#78E5F0) 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 (186°, 80%, 71%) 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
#78e5f0
RGB
rgb(120, 229, 240)
HSL
hsl(186, 80%, 71%)
HWB
hwb(186 47% 6%)
OKLCH
oklch(86.1% 0.101 204.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5781 0.8879 0.9325)
HSV
hsv(186, 50%, 94%)
LAB
lab(85.16% -28.44 -15.01)
LCH
lch(85.16% 32.16 207.83)
CMYK
cmyk(50%, 5%, 0%, 6%)

Etymology

Engraved
adjective

Old French engraver, to dig in — past-participle of engrave. As a color modifier, engraved implies a clear-and-precisely-cut quality, the crisp color of Albrecht-Dürer-and-Hogarth hand-pulled engraving-print fine-line incised-image. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to etched and inscribed 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.

#78e5f0
Original
#d6ddf1
Protanopia
#c3cff1
Deuteranopia
#27ede8
Tritanopia
#cfcfcf
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
1.47:1
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
14.26:1

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
##78E5F0
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5781 0.8879 0.9325)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.101

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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