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Plumb Athens Mint

#a9f8e6
Notes

Plumb Athens Mint (#A9F8E6) 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 (166°, 85%, 82%) 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 red. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#a9f8e6
RGB
rgb(169, 248, 230)
HSL
hsl(166, 85%, 82%)
HWB
hwb(166 66% 3%)
OKLCH
oklch(92.3% 0.081 178.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7307 0.9643 0.9039)
HSV
hsv(166, 32%, 97%)
LAB
lab(92.26% -27.90 0.95)
LCH
lch(92.26% 27.92 178.05)
CMYK
cmyk(32%, 0%, 7%, 3%)

Etymology

Plumb
adjective

Latin plumbum, lead — referring to the lead-weighted plumb-line of pre-modern carpentry. As a color modifier, plumb implies a clear-and-vertical-true quality where the hue carries the visual register of gravity-aligned-and-perfectly-vertical surface. Sits at the crisp-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to level and squared in usage.

Athens
modifier

Greek Ἀθῆναι, Athens. As a color modifier, athens implies an Acropolis-and-philosophical-city-state quality, the visual register of Athenian-Classical-City-State hand-built Acropolis-and-Parthenon-and-marble-temple-and-pottery Doric-and-Ionic-and-Corinthian surfaces under Athenian-Acropolis-and-Parthenon classical Aegean-marble-temple light. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to sparta and greek 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.

#a9f8e6
Original
#f2efe5
Protanopia
#e4e5e7
Deuteranopia
#91faf2
Tritanopia
#e6e6e6
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
1.22:1
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
17.26:1

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
##A9F8E6
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7307 0.9643 0.9039)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.081

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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