Riverbed

#86bebe

A cyan that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.

Hex

#86bebe

RGB

134, 190, 190

OKLCh

76.3% 0.058 196.0°

CIELAB (D50)

73.1, -18.8, -6.2

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 3 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses 45% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 40.5; on black, Lc -61.8. 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 18.4 and 20.2 and 25.6 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.07:1 — fails AA

Black text

10.12:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at10.12:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#498080 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.

Try it against your own background

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#86bebe

protanopia

#b9b9be · ΔE00 18.4

deuteranopia

#b0b0bf · ΔE00 20.2

tritanopia

#a5a5ff · ΔE00 25.6

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isCabana Bay at ΔE00 1.438: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.

  • Cabana BayΔE00 1.438 · #8ec1c0
  • CelestineΔE00 1.467 · #85c1c4
  • Chinese TzuΔE00 1.815 · #8fbfbd
  • LorianΔE00 2.153 · #8ebcbd
  • Vintage BlueΔE00 2.227 · #87b8b5
  • Blithe BlueΔE00 2.287 · #90bdbd
  • Bay MistΔE00 2.318 · #85c5c8
  • Embellished BlueΔE00 2.371 · #8bc7c8
  • Pure TurquoiseΔE00 2.394 · #7abec2
  • Kingfisher TurquoiseΔE00 2.513 · #7ab6b6
  • Misty Cold SeaΔE00 2.518 · #83bbc1
  • Big Sky CountryΔE00 2.558 · #85c4c9

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