Welcoming Lapis sits in the cool band at #16afa6. The name carries a real history — cyan has been describing this part of the spectrum for longer than the spectrum has been a word.
From the Greek *kyanos*
From the Greek kyanos, deep blue, originally referring to the lapis-derived blue of antiquity. In modern usage, cyan is one of the four printing primaries (with magenta, yellow, and black) and an additive primary on screens. The color refers to a pure CMYK cyan tile: a saturated, clean blue-green with the optical brightness of an additive-color primary. Cooler than turquoise, lighter than cerulean, with the technical specificity of a color defined by a printing-press standard.
A saturated cool cyan
Sits at OKLCH lightness 0.68, chroma 0.115, hue 188° — a saturated cool cyan, the kind of color that carries a clear hue without shouting.
Mid-luminance — the body-text decision goes either way. Test both directions; a 4.5:1 ratio against pure white or pure black is reachable, neither is automatic.
Pairings + neighbors
Triadic counterparts sit at #a716b1 and #b1a716 — three slices of the wheel 120° apart, the classic balanced trio. The pairings stay in the cool register if all three keep their saturation; pull one toward neutral and the trio turns into a feature-with-supporting-cast.
The closest curated cousin in the library is Light sea green at #20b2aa — a near-perceptual match (ΔE 1.4 in CIELAB). Worth the click if today's color almost works but you want to test a sibling.
Auto-composed from the etymology corpus and computed color properties · subject to revision