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Heartening Cygnus Mint

#97fdf4
Notes

Heartening Cygnus Mint (#97FDF4) is a soft cyan with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (175°, 96%, 79%) places it in the highly saturated band at a light lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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
#97fdf4
RGB
rgb(151, 253, 244)
HSL
hsl(175, 96%, 79%)
HWB
hwb(175 59% 1%)
OKLCH
oklch(92.9% 0.097 188.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6864 0.9822 0.9547)
HSV
hsv(175, 40%, 99%)
LAB
lab(93.17% -31.84 -5.06)
LCH
lch(93.17% 32.24 189.03)
CMYK
cmyk(40%, 0%, 4%, 1%)

Etymology

Heartening
adjective

Old English heorte (heart) — present-participle of hearten. As a color modifier, heartening implies a clear-and-uplifting-and-encouraging quality where the hue carries the visual register of cheerful-encouraging color-tone. Sits at the crisp-and-cheerful end of the grid, parallel to welcoming and cheerful in usage.

Cygnus
modifier

Latin cygnus, swan. As a color modifier, cygnus implies a swan-flying-and-Northern-Cross quality, the visual register of Cygnus-Swan-and-Northern-Cross hand-swan-flying-and-Northern-Cross Cygnus-Swan-and-Northern-Cross-and-Bortle-1-sky cygnus-and-swan-flying-and-Northern-Cross surfaces under Cygnus-Swan-and-Northern-Cross-and-Bortle-1-sky August-and-September-late-summer-zenith Milky-Way-stellar-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to deneb and lyra in usage.

Mint
noun

The genus Mentha — peppermint, spearmint, apple mint, water mint — the cooling herb whose menthol gives it that quality at the molecular level. The color refers to fresh peppermint leaves before drying: a clean, slightly cool green with the matte finish of trichome-rich leaf surface. Lighter than basil, cooler than parsley, with the mojito-and-Pimm's association of a herb tied to summer drinks across two continents.

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.

#97fdf4
Original
#f3f3f4
Protanopia
#e1e6f5
Deuteranopia
#6cfffa
Tritanopia
#e7e7e7
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
1.19:1
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
17.67:1

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
##97FDF4
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6864 0.9822 0.9547)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.097

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

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