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Tinted Forgetmenot

#9bb3bc
Notes

Tinted Forgetmenot (#9BB3BC) 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 (196°, 20%, 67%) 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 orange. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#9bb3bc
RGB
rgb(155, 179, 188)
HSL
hsl(196, 20%, 67%)
HWB
hwb(196 61% 26%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.1% 0.029 222.4)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6259 0.6991 0.7328)
HSV
hsv(196, 18%, 74%)
LAB
lab(71.45% -6.29 -7.34)
LCH
lch(71.45% 9.67 229.42)
CMYK
cmyk(18%, 5%, 0%, 26%)

Etymology

Tinted
adjective

Latin tīnctus, dyed — past-participle of tint. As a color modifier, tinted implies a pale-and-faintly-colored quality where the hue carries the visual register of base-white-or-neutral lightly-mixed-with-pigment surface. Sits at the pale-and-faintly-colored end of the grid, parallel to tinged and pastel in usage.

Forgetmenot
noun

Myosotis sylvatica, the European forget-me-not — a small woodland-and-streamside wildflower whose pale blue five-petaled flowers symbolize remembrance and faithful love in European folk tradition. The color refers to a fresh forget-me-not flower: a soft, slightly cool pale blue with the matte finish of small five-petaled flower with yellow center.

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.

#9bb3bc
Original
#aeb1bd
Protanopia
#a8adbc
Deuteranopia
#92b6b6
Tritanopia
#afafaf
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
2.19:1
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
9.57:1

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
##9BB3BC
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6259 0.6991 0.7328)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.029

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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