Below Zero
#87cded
A cyan that is muted. It is very light — it works as a page background, not as text.
Hex
#87cded
RGB
135, 205, 237
OKLCh
81.3% 0.084 228.6°
CIELAB (D50)
78.6, -16.7, -23.2
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 9 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses 70% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
- As text on white it measures APCA Lc 31.9; on black, Lc -70.8. 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 20.2 and 19.3 and 18.3 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
1.75:1 — fails AA
Black text
11.99:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at11.99:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#387f9c 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
#87cded
protanopia
#c7c7ed · ΔE00 20.2
deuteranopia
#bcbcee · ΔE00 19.3
tritanopia
#afafff · ΔE00 18.3
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isPool Tiles at ΔE00 0.589: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Pool TilesΔE00 0.589 · #89cff0
- Airy BlueΔE00 0.784 · #88ccee
- Afternoon SkyΔE00 0.991 · #87ceeb
- AnakiwaΔE00 1.159 · #8cceea
- Kul Sharif BlueΔE00 1.878 · #87d3f8
- Deluxe DaysΔE00 1.911 · #8bc7e6
- ShimmerΔE00 1.925 · #88c7e9
- Light Cornflower BlueΔE00 1.966 · #93ccea
- Slightly SpritzigΔE00 1.991 · #92d2ed
- Gossamer ThreadsΔE00 2.047 · #8ac8e2
- Thresher SharkΔE00 2.052 · #93cce7
- BluebottleΔE00 2.059 · #8ecfe8
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.