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Hazy Teal

#8bb7b5
Notes

Hazy Teal (#8BB7B5) 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 (177°, 23%, 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 red. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#8bb7b5
RGB
rgb(139, 183, 181)
HSL
hsl(177, 23%, 63%)
HWB
hwb(177 55% 28%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.7% 0.047 192.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5806 0.7128 0.7080)
HSV
hsv(177, 24%, 72%)
LAB
lab(71.34% -14.99 -3.76)
LCH
lch(71.34% 15.46 194.09)
CMYK
cmyk(24%, 0%, 1%, 28%)

Etymology

Hazy
adjective

An adjectival form of haze — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as if seen through atmospheric haze. Hazy yellow, hazy blue: low saturation combined with optical softness. Sits at the pale-bucket alongside misty and cloudlike.

Teal
noun

Anas crecca, the small dabbling duck whose male in breeding plumage sports a chestnut head crossed by a glossy green-blue stripe. The color refers to that stripe — the iridescent panel just behind the eye: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical depth of structural color rather than pigment. Cooler than cypress, warmer than cerulean, with the ornithological specificity of a color named for one feather of one bird.

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.

#8bb7b5
Original
#b2b2b5
Protanopia
#a9acb6
Deuteranopia
#7dbab6
Tritanopia
#aeaeae
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
2.20:1
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
9.54:1

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
##8BB7B5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5806 0.7128 0.7080)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.047

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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