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Disciplined Saxon

#81a2e7
Notes

Disciplined Saxon (#81A2E7) is a soft azure 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 (221°, 68%, 71%) places it in the balanced band at a light lightness. It works as a background wash, large-area fill, or soft illustration tone. Add a darker ink of the same hue when you need type over it. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#81a2e7
RGB
rgb(129, 162, 231)
HSL
hsl(221, 68%, 71%)
HWB
hwb(221 51% 9%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.5% 0.108 264.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5318 0.6315 0.8847)
HSV
hsv(221, 44%, 91%)
LAB
lab(66.73% 6.48 -38.34)
LCH
lch(66.73% 38.88 279.60)
CMYK
cmyk(44%, 30%, 0%, 9%)

Etymology

Disciplined
adjective

Latin disciplīna, teaching / training — past-participle of discipline. As a color modifier, disciplined implies a clear-and-controlled-and-careful quality where the hue carries the visual register of careful-edited-and-restrained design-decision. Sits at the crisp-and-orderly end of the grid, parallel to methodical and orderly in usage.

Saxon
noun

Saxon blue — a sulfuric-acid extraction of indigo developed in eighteenth-century Saxony that produced a brighter, slightly green-shifted blue than traditional indigo vat dyeing. The color refers to a Saxon-blue dyed wool: a saturated, slightly green-shifted deep blue with the matte finish of dyed natural fiber. Brighter than indigo, cooler than royal, with the textile-history weight of an industrial-process pigment that briefly competed with traditional indigo.

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.

#81a2e7
Original
#89a7ea
Protanopia
#7e9ee5
Deuteranopia
#5bb1ba
Tritanopia
#a0a0a0
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
2.54:1
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
8.26:1

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
##81A2E7
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5318 0.6315 0.8847)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.108

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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