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Reposeful Welkin

#9bb5da
Notes

Reposeful Welkin (#9BB5DA) is a soft azure 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 (215°, 46%, 73%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#9bb5da
RGB
rgb(155, 181, 218)
HSL
hsl(215, 46%, 73%)
HWB
hwb(215 61% 15%)
OKLCH
oklch(76.6% 0.061 257.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6275 0.7067 0.8420)
HSV
hsv(215, 29%, 85%)
LAB
lab(72.94% -0.45 -21.51)
LCH
lch(72.94% 21.52 268.80)
CMYK
cmyk(29%, 17%, 0%, 15%)

Etymology

Reposeful
adjective

Latin repōnere, to put back — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, reposeful implies a clear-and-restful-and-still quality, the calm color of pre-modern monastic cloister-and-refectory meditative-and-silent interior architecture. Sits at the crisp-and-calm end of the grid, parallel to peaceful and placid in usage.

Welkin
noun

The archaic English word for sky or cloud-vault — used in Old English religious literature, Shakespeare's Henry V ("the welkin's vicegerent and sole dominator"), and the Scottish ballad tradition. Welkin color refers to the sky in poetic register: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the optical brightness of clean atmosphere.

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.

#9bb5da
Original
#a8b6dc
Protanopia
#a1b0d9
Deuteranopia
#89bdc1
Tritanopia
#b2b2b2
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
2.10:1
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
10.02:1

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
##9BB5DA
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6275 0.7067 0.8420)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.061

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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