Exotic Escape

#96d9df

A cyan that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is very light — it works as a page background, not as text.

Hex

#96d9df

RGB

150, 217, 223

OKLCh

84.3% 0.068 203.0°

CIELAB (D50)

82.4, -20.8, -10.1

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 8 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses 47% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 26.3; on black, Lc -76.7. 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 20.7 and 22.0 and 23.5 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.58:1 — fails AA

Black text

13.29:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at13.29:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#3e8186 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

#96d9df

protanopia

#d3d3df · ΔE00 20.7

deuteranopia

#c8c8e0 · ΔE00 22.0

tritanopia

#bcbcff · ΔE00 23.5

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isArctic Blue at ΔE00 0.725: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Arctic BlueΔE00 0.725 · #95d6dc
  • Mini BlueΔE00 0.876 · #96d7db
  • Quiet PondΔE00 1.468 · #94d8e2
  • Aqua BloomΔE00 1.59 · #96d3d8
  • Lake ReflectionΔE00 1.595 · #9dd8db
  • DulcetΔE00 1.807 · #9ad4d8
  • Aroma BlueΔE00 1.932 · #96d2d6
  • Vibrant Soft BlueΔE00 1.989 · #88d6dc
  • VIC 20 SkyΔE00 2.072 · #87d6dd
  • Maya GreenΔE00 2.151 · #98d2d9
  • Plunging WaterfallΔE00 2.235 · #8cd4df
  • Fresh BlueΔE00 2.395 · #8bd6e2

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