Magical Merlin
#3d8ed0
A blue that is muted. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.
Hex
#3d8ed0
RGB
61, 142, 208
OKLCh
62.7% 0.127 246.4°
CIELAB (D50)
56.3, -8.7, -41.9
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- No other named colour in the set is within ΔE00 2 of it — it stands alone.
- It uses 78% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
- As text on white it measures APCA Lc 62.4; on black, Lc -39.3. 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 17.1 and 16.4 and 15.8 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
3.51:1 — large text only
Black text
5.98:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at5.98:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#287bbc is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#3d8ed0
protanopia
#8888d0 · ΔE00 17.1
deuteranopia
#7d7dd1 · ΔE00 16.4
tritanopia
#6f6fff · ΔE00 15.8
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isDelphinium Corsage at ΔE00 2.135: between 2 and 5 — clearly two colours when compared, easily mistaken from memory. What the numbers mean.
- Delphinium CorsageΔE00 2.135 · #4f92cd
- Ticino BlueΔE00 2.303 · #268bcc
- Azure BlueΔE00 2.348 · #4d91c6
- Zürich BlueΔE00 2.422 · #248bcc
- Blue DartΔE00 2.648 · #518fd1
- Klaxosaur BlueΔE00 3.073 · #2987c7
- Bleu de FranceΔE00 3.091 · #318ce7
- Perfect SkyΔE00 3.113 · #4596cf
- Casting SeaΔE00 3.203 · #4586c7
- Newport BlueΔE00 3.225 · #1c8ac9
- Blue ColaΔE00 3.243 · #0088dc
- Blue TourmalineΔE00 3.336 · #4997d0
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.