colors
Back to gallery

Filmy Bluegrass

#9cb3a9
Notes

Filmy Bluegrass (#9CB3A9) is a true teal 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 (154°, 13%, 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 magenta. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#9cb3a9
RGB
rgb(156, 179, 169)
HSL
hsl(154, 13%, 66%)
HWB
hwb(154 61% 30%)
OKLCH
oklch(74.6% 0.029 167.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6290 0.6992 0.6649)
HSV
hsv(154, 13%, 70%)
LAB
lab(70.99% -9.90 2.43)
LCH
lch(70.99% 10.20 166.20)
CMYK
cmyk(13%, 0%, 6%, 30%)

Etymology

Filmy
adjective

Old English filmen, thin layer — adjectival suffix -y. As a color modifier, filmy implies a pale-and-thin-and-translucent quality, the pale color of Edwardian-period gauze-and-tulle wedding-veil-and-curtain thin-and-translucent textile surface. Sits at the pale-and-thin end of the grid, parallel to gauzy and sheer in usage.

Bluegrass
noun

Poa pratensis, Kentucky bluegrass — the cool-season turf grass that dominates lawns of the American Northeast and Midwest. Bluegrass music takes its name from the same plant via Bill Monroe's bluegrass-state Kentucky band. The color refers to a fresh-mown Kentucky bluegrass lawn: a soft, slightly cool blue-green-gray with the matte finish of cropped grass.

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.

#9cb3a9
Original
#b2b0a9
Protanopia
#adacaa
Deuteranopia
#98b3b0
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
9.43:1

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
##9CB3A9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6290 0.6992 0.6649)
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.

Related Colors

Canvas