Blizzard Blue
#a3e3ed
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
#a3e3ed
RGB
163, 227, 237
OKLCh
87.6% 0.066 208.1°
CIELAB (D50)
86.2, -19.2, -11.7
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 3 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses 56% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
- As text on white it measures APCA Lc 20.2; on black, Lc -83.2. 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 20.4 and 21.4 and 22.1 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
1.42:1 — fails AA
Black text
14.77:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at14.77:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#418089 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
#a3e3ed
protanopia
#dddded · ΔE00 20.4
deuteranopia
#d3d3ee · ΔE00 21.4
tritanopia
#c7c7ff · ΔE00 22.1
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isUranus at ΔE00 1.412: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- UranusΔE00 1.412 · #ace5ee
- CharlotteΔE00 1.958 · #a4dce6
- Luminescent BlueΔE00 1.976 · #a4dde9
- Light Bluish WaterΔE00 2.192 · #a4dbe4
- Ice PackΔE00 2.325 · #a5dbe3
- Early JulyΔE00 2.33 · #a5ddea
- Havana BlueΔE00 2.358 · #a5dbe5
- Cool Water LakeΔE00 2.41 · #9bd9e5
- VandermintΔE00 2.608 · #abdee4
- Terrace PoolΔE00 2.761 · #a1d8e0
- Geyser PoolΔE00 2.767 · #a9dce2
- Blue BaubleΔE00 2.773 · #abdee3
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.