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Reliable Waft Mint

#9af2d9
Notes

Reliable Waft Mint (#9AF2D9) is a soft teal with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (163°, 77%, 78%) 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
#9af2d9
RGB
rgb(154, 242, 217)
HSL
hsl(163, 77%, 78%)
HWB
hwb(163 60% 5%)
OKLCH
oklch(89.8% 0.092 174.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6825 0.9401 0.8552)
HSV
hsv(163, 36%, 95%)
LAB
lab(89.57% -31.93 3.72)
LCH
lch(89.57% 32.15 173.36)
CMYK
cmyk(36%, 0%, 10%, 5%)

Etymology

Reliable
adjective

Latin re-ligāre, to bind back — adjectival suffix -able. As a color modifier, reliable implies a clear-and-trustworthy-and-consistent quality where the hue carries the visual register of dependable-and-consistent design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to dependable and trustworthy in usage.

Waft
modifier

Middle English waft, related to wafian, to-wave-in-air. As a color modifier, waft implies a gently-conveyed-and-air-borne-and-drifting quality, the visual register of incense-and-rose-petal-waft hand-gently-conveyed-and-air-borne-and-drifting incense-and-rose-petal-and-summer-curtain wafted-and-gently-conveyed-and-air-borne surfaces under incense-and-rose-petal-and-summer-curtain church-thurible-and-walled-rose-garden-and-open-window airborne-drift-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to drift and mist 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.

#9af2d9
Original
#ece8d8
Protanopia
#dddddb
Deuteranopia
#7ff4ea
Tritanopia
#dddddd
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
1.31:1
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
16.08:1

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
##9AF2D9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6825 0.9401 0.8552)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.092

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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