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Easy Arctic

#9aecec
Notes

Easy Arctic (#9AECEC) is a soft 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 (180°, 68%, 76%) 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 red. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#9aecec
RGB
rgb(154, 236, 236)
HSL
hsl(180, 68%, 76%)
HWB
hwb(180 60% 7%)
OKLCH
oklch(89.1% 0.080 195.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6761 0.9171 0.9212)
HSV
hsv(180, 35%, 93%)
LAB
lab(88.41% -24.82 -7.92)
LCH
lch(88.41% 26.05 197.69)
CMYK
cmyk(35%, 0%, 0%, 7%)

Etymology

Easy
adjective

Old French aisié, comfortable, at rest — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as visually undemanding. Easy beige, easy gray: moderate saturation combined with optical restfulness. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside calm and settled.

Arctic
noun

Greek ἄρκτος (árktos, bear) — used in geography for the Arctic-Circle northernmost-temperate-zone, particularly the iconic pure-white Ursus maritimus (polar bear) and Vulpes lagopus (Arctic fox). Arctic color refers to an Ursus maritimus in mid-winter pelage on Svalbard pack-ice: a pure white with the matte finish of pure-white melanin-depleted bear-fur against pack-ice 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.

#9aecec
Original
#e2e5ec
Protanopia
#d3d9ed
Deuteranopia
#79f1ec
Tritanopia
#dbdbdb
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
1.35:1
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
15.58:1

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
##9AECEC
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6761 0.9171 0.9212)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.080

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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