Sunken Mystery

#23505a

A cyan that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is mid — the hardest range to put text on, either colour struggles.

Hex

#23505a

RGB

35, 80, 90

OKLCh

40.4% 0.052 214.3°

CIELAB (D50)

31.2, -13.6, -10.9

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 6 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses 73% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 90.2; on black, Lc -12.1. 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 17.0 and 18.3 and 19.5 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

8.87:1 — passes AA

Black text

2.37:1 — fails AA

White text is the better of the two at8.87:1. That is enough for body text.

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#23505a

protanopia

#4c4c5a · ΔE00 17.0

deuteranopia

#46465b · ΔE00 18.3

tritanopia

#3f3f93 · ΔE00 19.5

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isAtlantic Deep at ΔE00 1.304: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.

  • Atlantic DeepΔE00 1.304 · #294f58
  • Genetic CodeΔE00 1.633 · #18515d
  • Hurricane Green BlueΔE00 1.655 · #254d54
  • StinkhornΔE00 1.66 · #2a545c
  • Pāua ShellΔE00 1.917 · #245056
  • Sea of AtlantisΔE00 1.973 · #2d535a
  • Recollection BlueΔE00 2.027 · #1a525b
  • Hidden WatersΔE00 2.311 · #225258
  • Berry Blue GreenΔE00 2.398 · #264b56
  • Frozen StreamΔE00 2.453 · #30555d
  • Encore TealΔE00 2.459 · #30525b
  • Nocturnal ExpeditionΔE00 2.487 · #114c5a

11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.