Wholesome Nova Kingfisher
Wholesome Nova Kingfisher (#8AECAE) is a soft 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 (142°, 72%, 73%) 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
An adjectival form of whole — used as a color modifier since the sixteenth century for hues that read as healthy and unadulterated. Wholesome cream, wholesome wheat: moderate saturation combined with the optical impression of a natural origin. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside genuine.
Latin nova, new-or-newly-bright-star. As a color modifier, nova implies a sudden-bright-and-newly-erupted-and-flaring quality, the visual register of Tycho-Brahe-and-Kepler-supernova-nova hand-sudden-bright-and-newly-erupted Tycho-Brahe-and-Kepler-and-Cassiopeia-A nova-and-sudden-bright-and-flaring surfaces under Tycho-Brahe-and-Kepler-and-Cassiopeia-A late-Renaissance-observatory-and-naked-eye sudden-stellar-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to flare and spark in usage.
The family Alcedinidae — particularly Alcedo atthis, the European common kingfisher whose iridescent turquoise-blue plumage gives the color its name. The color refers to a male European kingfisher's wing: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the iridescent satin finish of structurally colored feathers.
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.