Mermaid’s Kiss

#59c8a5

A cyan that is muted. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.

Hex

#59c8a5

RGB

89, 200, 165

OKLCh

75.8% 0.115 169.7°

CIELAB (D50)

73.5, -39.6, 7.5

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 3 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses 76% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 39.8; on black, Lc -62.6. 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 21.4 and 22.4 and 38.6 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.05:1 — fails AA

Black text

10.23:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at10.23:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#008768 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved, and some saturation was given up to stay inside sRGB.

Try it against your own background

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#59c8a5

protanopia

#bfbfa5 · ΔE00 21.4

deuteranopia

#b1b1a7 · ΔE00 22.4

tritanopia

#9e9eff · ΔE00 38.6

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isDiroset at ΔE00 0.928: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • DirosetΔE00 0.928 · #5acaa4
  • Aquarium BlueΔE00 1.693 · #66cdaa
  • Biscay GreenΔE00 1.897 · #55c6a9
  • Tropical TideΔE00 2.197 · #5ecaae
  • KauaiΔE00 2.373 · #5ac7ac
  • Shoreline GreenΔE00 2.409 · #58c6ab
  • JadeiteΔE00 2.425 · #38c6a1
  • New MeadowΔE00 2.526 · #48c09b
  • MacauΔE00 2.651 · #46c299
  • Minted EleganceΔE00 2.672 · #6ec9a3
  • Mint JellyΔE00 2.768 · #45cea2
  • Simply AquaΔE00 2.873 · #58ceb2

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