Open Creek
Open Creek (#ABFACF) 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 (147°, 89%, 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 magenta. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old English open, unobstructed — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as airy or uncrowded. Open blue, open green: moderate saturation combined with optical spaciousness, the slight visual breath of a hue that doesn't crowd the surface it covers. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside clear.
A small flowing waterway — slightly larger than a brook in American usage, slightly smaller in British. Creek color refers to a typical American Appalachian creek in summer: a soft, slightly cool deep blue-green with the optical clarity of slow-flowing forest stream.
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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.