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Misted Limonium

#9ca3bd
Notes

Misted Limonium (#9CA3BD) is a true blue 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 (227°, 20%, 68%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#9ca3bd
RGB
rgb(156, 163, 189)
HSL
hsl(227, 20%, 68%)
HWB
hwb(227 61% 26%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.9% 0.039 273.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6168 0.6383 0.7324)
HSV
hsv(227, 17%, 74%)
LAB
lab(67.23% 2.99 -14.19)
LCH
lch(67.23% 14.50 281.89)
CMYK
cmyk(17%, 14%, 0%, 26%)

Etymology

Misted
adjective

Old English mist — past-participle of mist. As a color modifier, misted implies a pale-and-vapor-veiled quality, the pale color of Cornish-coast-and-Highland early-morning fog-and-mist atmospheric-veiled surface. Sits at the pale-and-veiled end of the grid, parallel to mistlike and foggy in usage.

Limonium
noun

The genus Limoniumsea-lavender or statice, salt-tolerant coastal-marsh perennials with sprays of papery blue, purple, or white flower heads. The color refers to a fresh L. latifolium in late summer: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the matte papery finish of dried-feeling flower heads.

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.

#9ca3bd
Original
#9ca5be
Protanopia
#9aa2bc
Deuteranopia
#94a8ab
Tritanopia
#a3a3a3
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
2.50:1
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
8.39:1

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
##9CA3BD
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6168 0.6383 0.7324)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.039

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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