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Floating Aquamarine

#d3fff9
Notes

Floating Aquamarine (#D3FFF9) is a soft teal with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (172°, 100%, 91%) 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 red. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#d3fff9
RGB
rgb(211, 255, 249)
HSL
hsl(172, 100%, 91%)
HWB
hwb(172 83% 0%)
OKLCH
oklch(96.8% 0.046 186.3)
HSV
hsv(172, 17%, 100%)
LAB
lab(96.90% -15.13 -1.80)
LCH
lch(96.90% 15.23 186.77)
CMYK
cmyk(17%, 0%, 2%, 0%)

Etymology

Floating
adjective

Old English flotian, to float — present-participle of float. As a color modifier, floating implies a pale-and-suspended-and-buoyant quality where the hue carries the visual register of cork-on-water-and-balloon-in-air lifted-and-suspended movement. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to buoyant and floaty in usage.

Aquamarine
noun

An iron-tinged variety of beryl — the gemstone mined from pegmatite veins in Brazil, Madagascar, and the Pakistani Karakoram. Named for the Latin aqua marina, seawater. The color refers to a faceted Santa Maria aquamarine: a clean, slightly green-shifted blue with the gem's high refractive brilliance. Lighter than sapphire, deeper than seafoam, with the gem-trade specificity of a stone graded primarily for color depth.

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

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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.

#d3fff9
Original
#fafaf9
Protanopia
#f2f3fa
Deuteranopia
#c7fffd
Tritanopia
#f5f5f5
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
1.08:1
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
19.44:1

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