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Snowy Aquamarine

#8fb9b1
Notes

Snowy Aquamarine (#8FB9B1) is a true teal 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 (169°, 23%, 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 red. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#8fb9b1
RGB
rgb(143, 185, 177)
HSL
hsl(169, 23%, 64%)
HWB
hwb(169 56% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.3% 0.046 182.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5944 0.7208 0.6945)
HSV
hsv(169, 23%, 73%)
LAB
lab(72.03% -15.66 -0.53)
LCH
lch(72.03% 15.67 181.94)
CMYK
cmyk(23%, 0%, 4%, 27%)

Etymology

Snowy
adjective

An adjectival form of snow — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues with the optical brightness of fresh snow. Snowy white, snowy pink: very low saturation combined with high lightness and a slight cool shift. Sits at the pale-bucket alongside iced and frosted.

Aquamarine
noun

An iron-tinged variety of beryl — the gemstone mined from pegmatite veins in Brazil, Madagascar, and the Pakistani Karakoram. Named for the Latin aqua marina, seawater. The color refers to a faceted Santa Maria aquamarine: a clean, slightly green-shifted blue with the gem's high refractive brilliance. Lighter than sapphire, deeper than seafoam, with the gem-trade specificity of a stone graded primarily for color depth.

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.

#8fb9b1
Original
#b5b4b1
Protanopia
#adaeb2
Deuteranopia
#84bbb6
Tritanopia
#afafaf
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
2.16:1
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
9.74:1

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
##8FB9B1
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5944 0.7208 0.6945)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.046

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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