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Plotted Thaw Mint

#a9fde7
Notes

Plotted Thaw Mint (#A9FDE7) 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 (164°, 95%, 83%) 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
#a9fde7
RGB
rgb(169, 253, 231)
HSL
hsl(164, 95%, 83%)
HWB
hwb(164 66% 1%)
OKLCH
oklch(93.4% 0.087 176.0)
HSV
hsv(164, 33%, 99%)
LAB
lab(93.65% -30.06 2.46)
LCH
lch(93.65% 30.16 175.33)
CMYK
cmyk(33%, 0%, 9%, 1%)

Etymology

Plotted
adjective

Old English plot, small piece of ground — past-participle of plot. As a color modifier, plotted implies a clear-and-coordinate-mapped quality, the crisp color of Cartesian-and-graph-paper coordinate-plotted scientific-and-engineering data-visualization plot-line. Sits at the crisp-and-mapped end of the grid, parallel to mapped and surveyed in usage.

Thaw
modifier

Old English thawian, to-melt-or-soften. As a color modifier, thaw implies a spring-melt-and-softening-frost quality, the visual register of English-spring-and-Pennine-thaw hand-spring-melt-and-softening-frost English-spring-and-Pennine-thaw-and-Cumbria-Highland-thaw thaw-and-spring-melt-and-softening-frost surfaces under English-spring-and-Pennine-thaw-and-Cumbria-Highland-thaw Yorkshire-Dales-and-Lake-District-and-Cairngorm spring-melt-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to slush and rain 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

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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.

#a9fde7
Original
#f7f3e6
Protanopia
#e8e8e9
Deuteranopia
#90fff6
Tritanopia
#eaeaea
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
1.17:1
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
17.89:1

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