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Filmy Bayou

#89acb9
Notes

Filmy Bayou (#89ACB9) is a true cyan 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 (196°, 26%, 63%) 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
#89acb9
RGB
rgb(137, 172, 185)
HSL
hsl(196, 26%, 63%)
HWB
hwb(196 54% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.3% 0.043 222.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5648 0.6705 0.7192)
HSV
hsv(196, 26%, 73%)
LAB
lab(68.26% -8.87 -10.56)
LCH
lch(68.26% 13.79 229.98)
CMYK
cmyk(26%, 7%, 0%, 27%)

Etymology

Filmy
adjective

Old English filmen, thin layer — adjectival suffix -y. As a color modifier, filmy implies a pale-and-thin-and-translucent quality, the pale color of Edwardian-period gauze-and-tulle wedding-veil-and-curtain thin-and-translucent textile surface. Sits at the pale-and-thin end of the grid, parallel to gauzy and sheer in usage.

Bayou
noun

A slow-moving body of water in the Mississippi-Louisiana wetland — particularly the Atchafalaya Basin and Cajun Country swamps. Bayou color refers to typical Louisiana bayou water: a soft, slightly cool deep blue-green with the optical complexity of tannin-stained slow-moving freshwater under cypress canopy.

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.

#89acb9
Original
#a4aaba
Protanopia
#9da4b9
Deuteranopia
#7ab0b0
Tritanopia
#a5a5a5
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
2.42:1
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
8.67:1

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
##89ACB9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5648 0.6705 0.7192)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.043

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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