Sea Serpent
#4bc7cf
A cyan that is muted. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.
Hex
#4bc7cf
RGB
75, 199, 207
OKLCh
76.5% 0.108 201.2°
CIELAB (D50)
73.7, -33.6, -14.8
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 83% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
- As text on white it measures APCA Lc 39.0; on black, Lc -63.3. 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 25.6 and 26.1 and 30.1 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
2.03:1 — fails AA
Black text
10.37:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at10.37:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#00848b is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved, and some saturation was given up to stay inside sRGB.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#4bc7cf
protanopia
#bebecf · ΔE00 25.6
deuteranopia
#aeaed1 · ΔE00 26.1
tritanopia
#9a9aff · ΔE00 30.1
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isWatercourse at ΔE00 2.092: between 2 and 5 — clearly two colours when compared, easily mistaken from memory. What the numbers mean.
- WatercourseΔE00 2.092 · #5ccbd6
- Blue RadianceΔE00 2.32 · #58cfd4
- Baharroth BlueΔE00 2.581 · #58c1cd
- Turquoise SurfΔE00 2.677 · #00c5cd
- Paradise SkyΔE00 2.69 · #66c6d0
- Gem TurquoiseΔE00 2.723 · #53c2c3
- RapidsΔE00 2.725 · #52c7c7
- Panorama BlueΔE00 2.982 · #35bdc8
- Throat ChakraΔE00 3.007 · #6aced4
- Pharaoh’s SeasΔE00 3.412 · #59bbc2
- PetrichorΔE00 3.424 · #66cccc
- Beach SparkleΔE00 3.491 · #71cbd2
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.