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Plumb Bee-eater

#78e6ae
Notes

Plumb Bee-eater (#78E6AE) 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 (149°, 69%, 69%) 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 magenta. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#78e6ae
RGB
rgb(120, 230, 174)
HSL
hsl(149, 69%, 69%)
HWB
hwb(149 47% 10%)
OKLCH
oklch(84.5% 0.130 159.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5793 0.8918 0.6985)
HSV
hsv(149, 48%, 90%)
LAB
lab(83.78% -44.23 17.71)
LCH
lch(83.78% 47.64 158.18)
CMYK
cmyk(48%, 0%, 24%, 10%)

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.

Bee-eater
noun

The family Meropidae — Old World bee-eaters whose males display saturated blue-green plumage with chestnut and yellow markings. The color refers to a male European bee-eater's wing: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the iridescent satin finish of structurally colored feathers.

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.

#78e6ae
Original
#e4d8ab
Protanopia
#d3ccb1
Deuteranopia
#59e5d7
Tritanopia
#cbcbcb
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
1.53:1
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
13.73:1

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
##78E6AE
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5793 0.8918 0.6985)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.130

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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