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Level Geneva

#8d97ba
Notes

Level Geneva (#8D97BA) is a true blue 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 (227°, 25%, 64%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#8d97ba
RGB
rgb(141, 151, 186)
HSL
hsl(227, 25%, 64%)
HWB
hwb(227 55% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(68.1% 0.053 272.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5602 0.5909 0.7180)
HSV
hsv(227, 24%, 73%)
LAB
lab(62.79% 4.22 -19.33)
LCH
lch(62.79% 19.79 282.31)
CMYK
cmyk(24%, 19%, 0%, 27%)

Etymology

Level
adjective

Latin libella, small-balance / level-tool — sharing root with libra (balance). As a color modifier, level implies a clear-and-horizontal-true quality where the hue carries the visual register of gravity-perpendicular-and-perfectly-horizontal surface. Sits at the crisp-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to plumb and flat in usage.

Geneva
noun

Lake Geneva — Lac Léman in French — the largest Alpine lake, between Switzerland and France. Geneva color refers to Lake Geneva water at Montreux in midsummer: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the optical depth of Alpine glacier-fed lake.

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.

#8d97ba
Original
#8d9abc
Protanopia
#8a96b9
Deuteranopia
#829ea3
Tritanopia
#979797
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
2.89:1
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
7.27:1

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
##8D97BA
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5602 0.5909 0.7180)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.053

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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