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Sure Indygo

#b9bcf7
Notes

Sure Indygo (#B9BCF7) 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 (237°, 79%, 85%) 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 yellow. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#b9bcf7
RGB
rgb(185, 188, 247)
HSL
hsl(237, 79%, 85%)
HWB
hwb(237 73% 3%)
OKLCH
oklch(81.3% 0.083 282.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7276 0.7369 0.9507)
HSV
hsv(237, 25%, 97%)
LAB
lab(77.87% 11.47 -29.48)
LCH
lch(77.87% 31.63 291.26)
CMYK
cmyk(25%, 24%, 0%, 3%)

Etymology

Sure
adjective

Old French seur, certain — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as confident and stable. Sure red, sure blue: moderate saturation combined with optical commitment. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside steady and true.

Indygo
noun

Polish for indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) — adopted into Polish color terminology during the 18th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's textile-trade contact with Ottoman indigo merchants. Indygo color refers to a freshly indygo-dyed Polish-folk linen: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the matte finish of multi-bath fermentation indigo on hand-spun linen. Cooler than English indigo and warmer than Russian fioletovyy.

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.

#b9bcf7
Original
#acc3fa
Protanopia
#a9bff5
Deuteranopia
#aac6d0
Tritanopia
#c0c0c0
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
1.81:1
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
11.60:1

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
##B9BCF7
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7276 0.7369 0.9507)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.083

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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