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Levitated Goluboy

#859db9
Notes

Levitated Goluboy (#859DB9) is a true 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 (212°, 27%, 62%) 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 orange. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#859db9
RGB
rgb(133, 157, 185)
HSL
hsl(212, 27%, 62%)
HWB
hwb(212 52% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(68.7% 0.050 252.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5398 0.6129 0.7153)
HSV
hsv(212, 28%, 73%)
LAB
lab(63.84% -1.87 -17.24)
LCH
lch(63.84% 17.34 263.80)
CMYK
cmyk(28%, 15%, 0%, 27%)

Etymology

Levitated
adjective

Latin levitās, lightness — past-participle of levitate. As a color modifier, levitated implies a pale-and-suspended-and-lifted quality where the hue carries the visual register of magic-trick-and-stage-illusion lifted-and-suspended-state spatial-condition. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to floating and buoyant in usage.

Goluboy
noun

The Russian word for light blue — distinct from sinii (deep blue) in Russian color vocabulary, which (uniquely among major languages) names two separate basic blue categories. The color refers to a goluboy-painted Russian dacha shutter: a soft, slightly cool pale blue with the matte finish of weathered linseed-oil paint.

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.

#859db9
Original
#939eba
Protanopia
#8d98b8
Deuteranopia
#76a3a6
Tritanopia
#9a9a9a
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
2.79:1
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
7.52:1

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
##859DB9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5398 0.6129 0.7153)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.050

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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