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Adequately Camphor

#99acae
Notes

Adequately Camphor (#99ACAE) 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 (186°, 11%, 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
#99acae
RGB
rgb(153, 172, 174)
HSL
hsl(186, 11%, 64%)
HWB
hwb(186 60% 32%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.0% 0.021 204.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6141 0.6722 0.6805)
HSV
hsv(186, 12%, 68%)
LAB
lab(68.99% -6.17 -3.27)
LCH
lch(68.99% 6.98 207.91)
CMYK
cmyk(12%, 1%, 0%, 32%)

Etymology

Adequately
adjective

Latin adaequātus, made equal — adverbial-and-adjectival suffix -ly. As a color modifier, adequately implies a neutral-and-sufficient-and-fitting quality where the hue carries the visual register of sufficiently-fitting-and-adequately-coordinated color-decision matched to its functional requirement. Sits at the neutral-and-traditional end of the grid, parallel to sufficiently and appropriately in usage.

Camphor
noun

Sanskrit कर्पूर karpūra via Arabic kāfūr — the pale-cool-pale-gray-and-pale-cream crystalline terpene (C₁₀H₁₆O) extracted from Cinnamomum camphora tree-trunk-and-leaves, used in pre-modern Asian-and-European camphor-balm and camphor-mothball applications. Camphor color refers to a freshly extracted Cinnamomum camphora camphor-crystal-block on a Japanese hand-cut-cypress block-table: a pale cool gray with the matte finish of terpene-crystalline camphor-substrate.

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.

#99acae
Original
#a9aaae
Protanopia
#a5a7ae
Deuteranopia
#93aead
Tritanopia
#a8a8a8
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
2.37:1
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
8.87:1

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
##99ACAE
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6141 0.6722 0.6805)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.021

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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