HueComb

Catch the Wave

#b5dcd8

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

#b5dcd8

RGB

181, 220, 216

OKLCh

86.5% 0.041 188.8°

CIELAB (D50)

84.9, -13.8, -2.5

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 13 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 27% 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 22.6; on black, Lc -80.6. 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 14.2 and 15.6 and 23.1 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.48:1 — fails AA

Black text

14.19:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at14.19:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#597d7a 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

#b5dcd8

protanopia

#d8d8d8 · ΔE00 14.2

deuteranopia

#d2d2d9 · ΔE00 15.6

tritanopia

#cacaff · ΔE00 23.1

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isMinerva at ΔE00 0.617: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • MinervaΔE00 0.617 · #b5deda
  • Mystic SeaΔE00 0.999 · #b9e0db
  • Rivers EdgeΔE00 1.337 · #afd9d7
  • Wave TopΔE00 1.436 · #afd9d3
  • Ring Box BlueΔE00 1.502 · #b4d9d8
  • Frosty Soft BlueΔE00 1.577 · #b4e0de
  • Bleached AquaΔE00 1.617 · #bce3df
  • Sugar PoolΔE00 1.667 · #aed6d4
  • Bath Salt GreenΔE00 1.7 · #bbded7
  • Festival de VeranoΔE00 1.723 · #b5e1db
  • Mint BlueΔE00 1.908 · #bce0df
  • Blue GlassΔE00 1.932 · #b8dcdc

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