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Lightened Seychelles

#9bb49c
Notes

Lightened Seychelles (#9BB49C) is a true green 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 (122°, 14%, 66%) 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 violet. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#9bb49c
RGB
rgb(155, 180, 156)
HSL
hsl(122, 14%, 66%)
HWB
hwb(122 61% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.4% 0.044 146.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6267 0.7029 0.6191)
HSV
hsv(122, 14%, 71%)
LAB
lab(70.88% -13.25 9.39)
LCH
lch(70.88% 16.24 144.68)
CMYK
cmyk(14%, 0%, 13%, 29%)

Etymology

Lightened
adjective

Old English lēoht, light — past-participle of lighten. As a color modifier, lightened implies a pale-and-tone-raised-and-lightened quality, the pale color of Mid-Century-Modern pale-and-tone-raised interior-decoration paint-and-textile surface. Sits at the pale-and-light end of the grid, parallel to whitened and bleached in usage.

Seychelles
noun

The Indian Ocean granite-island archipelago — and the saturated turquoise of Seychellois lagoons at Anse Source d'Argent on La Digue. Seychelles refers to the granite-and-water boundary at Anse Source d'Argent: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the optical complexity of shallow water over weathered granite.

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.

#9bb49c
Original
#b5af9b
Protanopia
#b1ac9d
Deuteranopia
#99b3ad
Tritanopia
#adadad
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
2.23:1
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
9.40:1

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
##9BB49C
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6267 0.7029 0.6191)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.044

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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