colors
Back to gallery

Useful Suave Mint

#ceffdd
Notes

Useful Suave Mint (#CEFFDD) is a soft green with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (138°, 100%, 90%) 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.

HEX
#ceffdd
RGB
rgb(206, 255, 221)
HSL
hsl(138, 100%, 90%)
HWB
hwb(138 81% 0%)
OKLCH
oklch(95.7% 0.068 154.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.8462 0.9944 0.8763)
HSV
hsv(138, 19%, 100%)
LAB
lab(95.94% -21.98 11.17)
LCH
lch(95.94% 24.65 153.07)
CMYK
cmyk(19%, 0%, 13%, 0%)

Etymology

Useful
adjective

Latin ūsus, use — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, useful implies a clear-and-purpose-serving quality where the hue carries the visual register of helpful-and-supporting design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to practical and serviceable in usage.

Suave
modifier

French suave, smooth / sweet. As a color modifier, suave implies a smooth-and-polished-and-elegant quality, the visual register of Belle-Époque-and-Mid-Century-Modern polished-and-elegant-and-smooth Belle-Époque-and-Mid-Century-Modern interior-decoration smooth-and-polished surfaces under Belle-Époque-and-Mid-Century-Modern smooth-and-polished elegance light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to sleek and gloss 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

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.

#ceffdd
Original
#fff7db
Protanopia
#f6f1df
Deuteranopia
#c7fef5
Tritanopia
#f2f2f2
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
1.11:1
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
18.97:1

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
##CEFFDD
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.8462 0.9944 0.8763)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.068

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.

Related Colors

Canvas