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Smooth Coronet

#acb5e1
Notes

Smooth Coronet (#ACB5E1) is a soft blue with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (230°, 47%, 78%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#acb5e1
RGB
rgb(172, 181, 225)
HSL
hsl(230, 47%, 78%)
HWB
hwb(230 67% 12%)
OKLCH
oklch(78.1% 0.064 275.8)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6809 0.7087 0.8683)
HSV
hsv(230, 24%, 88%)
LAB
lab(74.35% 6.29 -23.07)
LCH
lch(74.35% 23.91 285.25)
CMYK
cmyk(24%, 20%, 0%, 12%)

Etymology

Smooth
adjective

Old English smōþ, level, polished — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as continuous without texture or break. Smooth tan, smooth gray: moderate saturation combined with optical evenness. Sits in the crisp-bucket alongside even.

Coronet
noun

Old French coronete, little crown — a small ornamental crown worn by lower-rank European nobility (dukes, earls, viscounts, barons) and Crown Princes of Britain. The coronet of an English duke is set with deep-blue sapphire. Coronet color refers to an English duke's coronet with its sapphire alternation: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the glassy finish of polished Ceylon sapphire on gilt metal.

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.

#acb5e1
Original
#a9b9e3
Protanopia
#a5b5e0
Deuteranopia
#9fbdc4
Tritanopia
#b6b6b6
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
2.01:1
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
10.45:1

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
##ACB5E1
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6809 0.7087 0.8683)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.064

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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