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Useful Blink Mint

#a8eac5
Notes

Useful Blink Mint (#A8EAC5) is a soft teal with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (146°, 61%, 79%) places it in the balanced 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 magenta. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#a8eac5
RGB
rgb(168, 234, 197)
HSL
hsl(146, 61%, 79%)
HWB
hwb(146 66% 8%)
OKLCH
oklch(88.3% 0.084 159.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7140 0.9106 0.7825)
HSV
hsv(146, 28%, 92%)
LAB
lab(87.58% -28.19 11.38)
LCH
lch(87.58% 30.40 158.01)
CMYK
cmyk(28%, 0%, 16%, 8%)

Etymology

Useful
adjective

Latin ūsus, use — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, useful implies a clear-and-purpose-serving quality where the hue carries the visual register of helpful-and-supporting design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to practical and serviceable in usage.

Blink
modifier

Middle Dutch blinken, to-shine-or-twinkle. As a color modifier, blink implies a quick-and-twinkling-and-on-off quality, the visual register of lighthouse-beam-and-firefly-blink hand-quick-and-twinkling-and-on-off lighthouse-beam-and-firefly-and-Morse-lamp blinked-and-quick-and-twinkling surfaces under lighthouse-beam-and-firefly-and-Morse-lamp coastal-headland-and-summer-meadow rotating-and-pulsed-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to wink and glint in usage.

Mint
noun

The genus Mentha — peppermint, spearmint, apple mint, water mint — the cooling herb whose menthol gives it that quality at the molecular level. The color refers to fresh peppermint leaves before drying: a clean, slightly cool green with the matte finish of trichome-rich leaf surface. Lighter than basil, cooler than parsley, with the mojito-and-Pimm's association of a herb tied to summer drinks across two continents.

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.

#a8eac5
Original
#e9e0c3
Protanopia
#ddd8c7
Deuteranopia
#9be9df
Tritanopia
#d9d9d9
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
1.38:1
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
15.24:1

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
##A8EAC5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7140 0.9106 0.7825)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.084

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

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