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Patterned Indicolite

#81aea9
Notes

Patterned Indicolite (#81AEA9) 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 (173°, 22%, 59%) 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
#81aea9
RGB
rgb(129, 174, 169)
HSL
hsl(173, 22%, 59%)
HWB
hwb(173 51% 32%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.7% 0.049 187.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5427 0.6774 0.6619)
HSV
hsv(173, 26%, 68%)
LAB
lab(67.87% -16.07 -2.32)
LCH
lch(67.87% 16.24 188.21)
CMYK
cmyk(26%, 0%, 3%, 32%)

Etymology

Patterned
adjective

Old French patron, pattern / model — past-participle of pattern. As a color modifier, patterned implies a pale-and-repeating-design-and-structured quality, the pale color of William-Morris-and-Liberty-of-London hand-block-printed-and-repeated decorative-and-structured pattern-design surface. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to marbled and figured in usage.

Indicolite
noun

A blue variety of tourmaline — colored by trace iron, mined principally in Brazil, Mozambique, and Pakistan. The color refers to a faceted Brazilian indicolite: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the gem's signature internal warmth. Cooler than aquamarine.

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.

#81aea9
Original
#a9a9a9
Protanopia
#a1a3aa
Deuteranopia
#73b0ac
Tritanopia
#a4a4a4
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
2.45:1
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
8.56:1

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
##81AEA9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5427 0.6774 0.6619)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.049

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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