Once in a Blue Moon
#0044bb
A blue that is saturated. It is mid — the hardest range to put text on, either colour struggles.
Hex
#0044bb
RGB
0, 68, 187
OKLCh
43.7% 0.196 261.6°
CIELAB (D50)
32.2, 22.0, -68.7
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- One other named colour sits within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It sits exactly on the sRGB boundary: at this lightness and hue the gamut has nothing left, and a wider display would show a more colourful version of it.
- As text on white it measures APCA Lc 87.5; on black, Lc -14.7. The sign is the polarity, which the WCAG ratio discards.
- Built into an eleven-step scale, 10 of the 10 adjacent pairs stay ΔE00 2 apart — see the ramp.
- protanopia and deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 6.6 and 6.9 and 8.3 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
8.25:1 — passes AA
Black text
2.54:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at8.25:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#0044bb
protanopia
#4040bb · ΔE00 6.6
deuteranopia
#3939bb · ΔE00 6.9
tritanopia
#3030d6 · ΔE00 8.3
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isAbsolute Zero at ΔE00 1.37: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- Absolute ZeroΔE00 1.37 · #0048ba
- Indian PeafowlΔE00 2.015 · #0044aa
- DenimΔE00 2.045 · #2243b6
- Soulstone BlueΔE00 2.3 · #0047ab
- Flying Fish BlueΔE00 2.482 · #024aca
- Blue BlueΔE00 3.028 · #2242c7
- The Blues BrothersΔE00 3.103 · #214daa
- Night in ManchesterΔE00 3.453 · #324ab2
- Apnea DiveΔE00 3.527 · #284fbd
- Space ExplorerΔE00 3.644 · #114499
- Kikorangi BlueΔE00 3.704 · #2e4ebf
- New CarΔE00 3.715 · #214fc6
10 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.