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Steady Seagrass

#86ebb8
Notes

Steady Seagrass (#86EBB8) 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 (150°, 72%, 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.

HEX
#86ebb8
RGB
rgb(134, 235, 184)
HSL
hsl(150, 72%, 72%)
HWB
hwb(150 53% 8%)
OKLCH
oklch(86.5% 0.120 160.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6210 0.9119 0.7358)
HSV
hsv(150, 43%, 92%)
LAB
lab(85.98% -40.87 15.67)
LCH
lch(85.98% 43.77 159.03)
CMYK
cmyk(43%, 0%, 22%, 8%)

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.

Seagrass
noun

Marine flowering plants — distinct from algae — that form underwater meadows in shallow coastal waters worldwide. Genera include Zostera, Posidonia, Thalassia. The color refers to a tropical seagrass meadow at low tide: a soft, slightly cool deep blue-green with the satin finish of submerged grass-leaves.

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.

#86ebb8
Original
#e9deb5
Protanopia
#d9d3bb
Deuteranopia
#6ceadd
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
1.44:1
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
14.59:1

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
##86EBB8
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6210 0.9119 0.7358)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.120

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.

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