Lined Steel
Lined Steel (#96A5E6) is a soft 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 (229°, 62%, 75%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old English līne, line / cord — past-participle of line. As a color modifier, lined implies a clear-and-coordinated-and-supported quality where the hue carries the visual register of carefully-lined-and-supported textile-or-print surface. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to trim and coordinated in usage.
An iron-carbon alloy hardened by heat treatment — and steel blue refers specifically to the blue oxide layer that forms on tempered steel as it's heated through 290°C, the temper colors a blacksmith reads to gauge the correct hardness. The color is the blue of a freshly tempered file: a soft, slightly muted gray-blue with the metallic finish of an oxidation layer. Cooler than slate, warmer than denim.
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.