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Sanitary Down Mint

#89c4a0
Notes

Sanitary Down Mint (#89C4A0) is a true green 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 (143°, 33%, 65%) 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 magenta. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#89c4a0
RGB
rgb(137, 196, 160)
HSL
hsl(143, 33%, 65%)
HWB
hwb(143 54% 23%)
OKLCH
oklch(77.0% 0.080 157.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5871 0.7624 0.6377)
HSV
hsv(143, 30%, 77%)
LAB
lab(74.40% -26.57 12.07)
LCH
lch(74.40% 29.19 155.57)
CMYK
cmyk(30%, 0%, 18%, 23%)

Etymology

Sanitary
adjective

Latin sānitās, health — adjectival suffix -ary. As a color modifier, sanitary implies a clear-and-clean-and-medical quality, the crisp color of Bauhaus-and-Modern clinical-and-hospital interior-architecture white-tile-and-stainless-steel surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to hygienic and sterile in usage.

Down
modifier

Old Norse dúnn, down / soft-feather. As a color modifier, down implies a soft-feather-undercoat quality, the visual register of eider-and-goose-down hand-plucked-and-cleaned eider-and-goose-down soft-feather-undercoat surfaces under eider-and-goose-down hand-plucked-and-cleaned bedding-and-cushion light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to fluff and fur in usage.

Mint
noun

The genus Mentha — peppermint, spearmint, apple mint, water mint — the cooling herb whose menthol gives it that quality at the molecular level. The color refers to fresh peppermint leaves before drying: a clean, slightly cool green with the matte finish of trichome-rich leaf surface. Lighter than basil, cooler than parsley, with the mojito-and-Pimm's association of a herb tied to summer drinks across two continents.

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.

#89c4a0
Original
#c3bb9e
Protanopia
#b9b4a2
Deuteranopia
#7ec3ba
Tritanopia
#b5b5b5
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
2.01:1
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
10.47:1

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
##89C4A0
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5871 0.7624 0.6377)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.080

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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