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Steady Mallorca

#85b4db
Notes

Steady Mallorca (#85B4DB) 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 (207°, 54%, 69%) places it in the balanced 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
#85b4db
RGB
rgb(133, 180, 219)
HSL
hsl(207, 54%, 69%)
HWB
hwb(207 52% 14%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.1% 0.075 244.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5601 0.7007 0.8445)
HSV
hsv(207, 39%, 86%)
LAB
lab(71.38% -5.80 -24.56)
LCH
lch(71.38% 25.24 256.71)
CMYK
cmyk(39%, 18%, 0%, 14%)

Etymology

Steady
adjective

Old English stede, place, position — drifted to mean firm and unmoving. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as reliable rather than dramatic. Steady gray, steady green: moderate saturation combined with optical calmness. Sits in the crisp-bucket center alongside settled.

Mallorca
noun

The largest Balearic island — and the saturated deep blue of Mallorcan Tramuntana coastline at Cala Tuent and Sa Calobra. Mallorca color refers to the cove water at Sa Calobra: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the optical depth of cold-water Mediterranean cove against limestone cliff.

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.

#85b4db
Original
#a4b4dd
Protanopia
#99abda
Deuteranopia
#66bdc1
Tritanopia
#adadad
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
2.20:1
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
9.55:1

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
##85B4DB
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5601 0.7007 0.8445)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.075

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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