Aqueous Polemonium
Aqueous Polemonium (#D2DDFA) is a soft azure with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (223°, 80%, 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin aquōsus, full of water — adjectival suffix -ous. As a color modifier, aqueous implies a pale-and-water-thin-and-translucent quality, the pale color of Japanese-sumi-e and Chinese-Song-dynasty-painting heavy-water-dilution ink-painting surface-finish. Sits at the pale-and-diluted end of the grid, parallel to watery and thinned in usage.
The genus Polemonium — Jacob's ladder, the European and North American rock-garden perennial whose pinnate ladder-shaped foliage and clusters of blue flowers appear in late spring. The color refers to a fresh P. caeruleum in flower: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the matte finish of small five-petaled bell-shaped flower.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
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.