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Even Quicklime

#9eb4b1
Notes

Even Quicklime (#9EB4B1) 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 (172°, 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 red. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#9eb4b1
RGB
rgb(158, 180, 177)
HSL
hsl(172, 13%, 66%)
HWB
hwb(172 62% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.2% 0.025 186.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6360 0.7032 0.6938)
HSV
hsv(172, 12%, 71%)
LAB
lab(71.61% -8.15 -1.03)
LCH
lch(71.61% 8.22 187.22)
CMYK
cmyk(12%, 0%, 2%, 29%)

Etymology

Even
adjective

Old English efen, flat, equal — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as uniformly distributed across a surface. Even gray, even tan: the implication is moderate saturation combined with optical uniformity. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside steady and balanced.

Quicklime
noun

Old English cwic-lim, living-lime — the pale-cool-pale-gray calcium-oxide (CaO) burnt-limestone product, used in pre-modern European quick-lime-and-mortar and quicklime-bath applications. Quicklime color refers to a freshly burnt-and-screened Carboniferous-limestone quicklime kiln-batch in raking light: a pale cool gray with the matte finish of coarse-grained hand-screened calcium-oxide lime-and-water-reactive heat-treated limestone.

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.

#9eb4b1
Original
#b1b1b1
Protanopia
#adaeb1
Deuteranopia
#98b5b3
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
2.18:1
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
9.62:1

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
##9EB4B1
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6360 0.7032 0.6938)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.025

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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