colors
Back to gallery

Sure Pool

#81dbfb
Notes

Sure Pool (#81DBFB) 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 (196°, 94%, 75%) 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 orange. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#81dbfb
RGB
rgb(129, 219, 251)
HSL
hsl(196, 94%, 75%)
HWB
hwb(196 51% 2%)
OKLCH
oklch(84.7% 0.097 223.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5894 0.8500 0.9701)
HSV
hsv(196, 49%, 98%)
LAB
lab(83.07% -18.63 -23.95)
LCH
lch(83.07% 30.34 232.13)
CMYK
cmyk(49%, 13%, 0%, 2%)

Etymology

Sure
adjective

Old French seur, certain — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as confident and stable. Sure red, sure blue: moderate saturation combined with optical commitment. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside steady and true.

Pool
noun

A constructed body of water — the residential or municipal swimming pool, almost universally lined with white plaster or pale tile that filters the water's color toward blue-green. The color refers to a sunlit pool at noon: a clean, slightly green-shifted light blue with the optical density of chlorinated water in a treated basin. Cooler than aqua, warmer than turquoise, with the suburban weight of mid-century leisure.

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.

#81dbfb
Original
#c9d7fd
Protanopia
#b6c9fb
Deuteranopia
#3ee5e5
Tritanopia
#cacaca
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
1.56:1
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
13.46:1

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
##81DBFB
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5894 0.8500 0.9701)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.097

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.

Related Colors

Canvas