Defined Reef
Defined Reef (#85EAB0) 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 (146°, 71%, 72%) 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 magenta. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin dēfīnīre, to set bounds — past-participle of define. As a color modifier, defined implies a clear-and-edge-distinct-and-precise quality where the hue carries the visual register of sharp-bounded-and-clearly-delimited surface. Sits at the crisp-and-clear end of the grid, parallel to crisp and sharp in usage.
The biological structure built by colonies of Anthozoa corals over millennia — Great Barrier Reef, Caribbean fringing reefs, Maldivian atolls. The color reef refers to the average coloration of a healthy mid-depth Caribbean reef: a soft, slightly muted blue-green with the optical complexity of light scattered through tropical water and refracted off thousands of small organisms. Cooler than seafoam, warmer than turquoise.
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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.