HueComb

Clear Water

#aad5db

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

#aad5db

RGB

170, 213, 219

OKLCh

84.4% 0.046 206.8°

CIELAB (D50)

82.3, -13.6, -7.9

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 19 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it — this part of the space is crowded, and the names here are finer distinctions than most people make.
  • It uses only 32% of the chroma available at this lightness and hue — there is a far more vivid version of this colour inside sRGB.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 26.5; on black, Lc -76.5. 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 15.9 and 17.2 and 20.7 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.58:1 — fails AA

Black text

13.25:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at13.25:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#557d83 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

#aad5db

protanopia

#d1d1db · ΔE00 15.9

deuteranopia

#cacadc · ΔE00 17.2

tritanopia

#c1c1ff · ΔE00 20.7

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isLight Jellyfish Blue at ΔE00 0.5: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Light Jellyfish BlueΔE00 0.5 · #acd6db
  • Light BathingΔE00 0.534 · #abd5dc
  • Iced AquaΔE00 0.783 · #a7d4d9
  • Light Sea SprayΔE00 0.86 · #abd6de
  • Rapture BlueΔE00 0.903 · #a7d6dd
  • Aqua FrostΔE00 1.106 · #a9d1d7
  • Midwinter MistΔE00 1.115 · #a5d4dc
  • CayΔE00 1.198 · #a6d0d6
  • Daly WatersΔE00 1.248 · #afdadf
  • Light ImagineΔE00 1.306 · #aed4d8
  • CrystalΔE00 1.432 · #a7d8de
  • Araucana EggΔE00 1.44 · #add8e1

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