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Truthful Seaholly

#9ef6bc
Notes

Truthful Seaholly (#9EF6BC) is a soft green with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (140°, 83%, 79%) places it in the highly saturated band at a light lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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
#9ef6bc
RGB
rgb(158, 246, 188)
HSL
hsl(140, 83%, 79%)
HWB
hwb(140 62% 4%)
OKLCH
oklch(90.2% 0.117 154.5)
HSV
hsv(140, 36%, 96%)
LAB
lab(90.23% -38.41 19.71)
LCH
lch(90.23% 43.17 152.84)
CMYK
cmyk(36%, 0%, 24%, 4%)

Etymology

Truthful
adjective

Old English trēowth, truth — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, truthful implies a clear-and-honest-and-direct quality where the hue carries the visual register of accurate-and-faithful-representation declaration. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to candid and honest in usage.

Seaholly
noun

Eryngium maritimum, the European sea holly — a coastal-dune perennial with silver-blue spiny foliage and metallic-blue flower heads, persistent enough to weather Atlantic storms on exposed dune ridges. The color refers to fresh E. maritimum foliage: a soft, slightly cool silver-blue-green with the matte finish of waxy-cuticled coastal succulent.

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

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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.

#9ef6bc
Original
#f6e9b9
Protanopia
#e8dfbf
Deuteranopia
#8ef4e6
Tritanopia
#dfdfdf
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
1.28:1
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
16.36:1

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