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Foggy Moonstone

#a4bbc9
Notes

Foggy Moonstone (#A4BBC9) 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 (203°, 26%, 72%) places it in the muted 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 orange. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#a4bbc9
RGB
rgb(164, 187, 201)
HSL
hsl(203, 26%, 72%)
HWB
hwb(203 64% 21%)
OKLCH
oklch(77.9% 0.032 234.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6603 0.7306 0.7822)
HSV
hsv(203, 18%, 79%)
LAB
lab(74.60% -4.86 -9.69)
LCH
lch(74.60% 10.84 243.37)
CMYK
cmyk(18%, 7%, 0%, 21%)

Etymology

Foggy
adjective

Old English focgi, fog — adjectival suffix -y. As a color modifier, foggy implies a pale-and-vaporous-and-low-visibility quality, the pale color of San-Francisco-and-Vancouver coastal-marine-layer dense-fog-and-low-visibility atmospheric-condition. Sits at the pale-and-veiled end of the grid, parallel to mistlike and misted in usage.

Moonstone
noun

A variety of orthoclase feldspar with optical adularescence — a milky shimmer caused by light scattering off internal lamellae. Mined principally in Sri Lanka. The color refers to a polished moonstone cabochon: a soft, very pale slightly cool gray-white with the cloudy translucency and optical movement that gives the gem its name. Cooler than pearl.

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.

#a4bbc9
Original
#b5baca
Protanopia
#afb6c9
Deuteranopia
#9abfbf
Tritanopia
#b7b7b7
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
1.99:1
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
10.53:1

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
##A4BBC9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6603 0.7306 0.7822)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.032

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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