Plainspoken Watercress
Plainspoken Watercress (#B9E8A0) is a soft lime with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (99°, 61%, 77%) 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 indigo. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
English compound plain + spoken — past-participle of speak. As a color modifier, plainspoken implies a clear-and-direct-and-straightforward quality where the hue carries the visual register of unembellished-honest declaration. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to candid and direct in usage.
Nasturtium officinale, the European aquatic mustard-family green eaten in soups, salads, and sandwiches — particularly in the celebrated cresson de fontaine of French bouquet garni. Watercress color refers to fresh-picked watercress in cool stream water: a saturated, slightly cool deep yellow-green with the satin finish of aquatic-leaf surface. Cooler than arugula.
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.