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Placid Maldives

#81ebcb
Notes

Placid Maldives (#81EBCB) is a soft 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 (162°, 73%, 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 red. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#81ebcb
RGB
rgb(129, 235, 203)
HSL
hsl(162, 73%, 71%)
HWB
hwb(162 51% 8%)
OKLCH
oklch(86.7% 0.110 171.9)
HSV
hsv(162, 45%, 92%)
LAB
lab(86.20% -38.15 6.03)
LCH
lch(86.20% 38.62 171.02)
CMYK
cmyk(45%, 0%, 14%, 8%)

Etymology

Placid
adjective

Latin placidus, gentle / quiet — derived from placēre (to please). As a color modifier, placid implies a clear-and-unruffled quality where the hue carries the visual register of mirror-smooth lake-surface in windless mid-morning. Sits at the crisp-and-calm end of the grid, parallel to serene and peaceful in usage.

Maldives
noun

The Indian Ocean atoll-nation — and the saturated turquoise of Maldivian lagoon water. Maldives color refers to a North Malé atoll lagoon at midday: a saturated, slightly cool bright blue-green with the optical clarity of shallow water over white coral sand. Brighter than tahiti.

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

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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.

#81ebcb
Original
#e5dfca
Protanopia
#d4d3cd
Deuteranopia
#5bede2
Tritanopia
#d2d2d2
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
1.43:1
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
14.68:1

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