colors
Back to gallery

Cool Arbor Mint

#9afeeb
Notes

Cool Arbor Mint (#9AFEEB) 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 (169°, 98%, 80%) 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
#9afeeb
RGB
rgb(154, 254, 235)
HSL
hsl(169, 98%, 80%)
HWB
hwb(169 60% 0%)
OKLCH
oklch(93.0% 0.098 180.5)
HSV
hsv(169, 39%, 100%)
LAB
lab(93.34% -33.60 -0.14)
LCH
lch(93.34% 33.60 180.23)
CMYK
cmyk(39%, 0%, 7%, 0%)

Etymology

Cool
adjective

Old English cōl, of low temperature — used as a color modifier as the complement to warm. Cool gray, cool blue: the optical impression of a slight blue-green shift, even within otherwise warm or neutral hues. Sits across the crisp, hushed, pale, and neutral buckets.

Arbor
modifier

Latin arbor, tree-or-trunk. As a color modifier, arbor implies a Latin-tree-and-vine-arbor quality, the visual register of Pliny-Natural-History-and-Roman-villa-arbor hand-Latin-tree-and-vine-arbor Pliny-Natural-History-and-Roman-villa-arbor-and-pergola arbor-and-Latin-tree-and-vine-arbor surfaces under Pliny-Natural-History-and-Roman-villa-arbor-and-pergola Pompeii-and-Tuscan-pergola-and-grape-arbor leafy-shade-light. Sits at the modifier-and-Latin end of the grid, parallel to via and domus 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.

#9afeeb
Original
#f6f3ea
Protanopia
#e5e7ed
Deuteranopia
#76fff8
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
1.18:1
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
17.75:1

Related Colors

Canvas