Aqua Tone Muted (#87ABAB) belongs to the teal family — hue 180°, 18% saturation, 60% lightness. Copy the hex, RGB, or HSL value above, or paste the CSS custom property below into your stylesheet to reference this color directly.
:root { --colorarchive-aqua-tone-muted: #87ABAB; --colorarchive-aqua-tone-muted-hsl: hsl(180, 18%, 60%); --colorarchive-aqua-tone-muted-rgb: rgb(135, 171, 171); }
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Warm orange for complementary energy, dark slate for depth
A versatile primary color for brands seeking to appear both creative and reliable. Works across light and dark themes.
Teal balances emotional stability with mental clarity. It's associated with communication and healing in color therapy.
The hue of patina, lagoons, and modern surgery.
Teal — the blue-green range — is named after the Eurasian teal duck, whose wing patches sit at exactly this hue. Egyptian blue and Egyptian green, both made from copper-calcium silicate around 2,500 BCE, sit in this region. The patina of weathered copper (the Statue of Liberty's color) is teal because copper carbonate forms there; Bacon's verdigris is the same chemistry. Phthalo turquoise and cobalt teal are 20th-century pigments.
In Persian and Central Asian Islamic architecture, teal-turquoise tile work is iconic — the domes of Samarkand and Isfahan are unmistakable. In ancient Egypt, faience (a kind of glazed ceramic in this color) was associated with the Nile, fertility, and rebirth. In the American Southwest, teal-turquoise is so deeply associated with Navajo and Pueblo silverwork that the color reads 'desert' there.
Hospital scrubs are teal because it's the perceptual complement of red blood — staring at red and then looking away produces a green-teal afterimage, and matching the scrubs to that afterimage reduces eye fatigue. Tiffany's blue is a calibrated teal, trademarked as PMS 1837 (their founding year). Most Pixar films grade their shadows toward teal because warm skin against cool shadow is the most legible cinematographic combination. The Apple Watch SE, the Surface Pro, and the new Macs all use teal as a 'calming-but-modern' accent.
Teal sits at one of the visually quietest points of the spectrum — it neither advances (like red) nor recedes (like blue). It reads as competent, calm, and slightly clinical; it's the dominant accent color in healthcare and trust-led fintech for that reason. At low saturation it becomes a duck-egg or seafoam, soft and Scandinavian. At high saturation it becomes electric or tropical. Teal pairs particularly well with warm earth tones (terracotta, clay, beige).
A grounded mid-tone — sober, considered, well-suited to body text accents, editorial layouts, or any context where restraint reads as quality.
Lightness band: At mid-lightness the hue carries its full character. This is the band where most identity colors live: bright enough to be distinctive at small sizes, deep enough to sit cleanly on a white canvas.
Saturation band: The low saturation pulls this color toward earthen, vintage, or editorial palettes. It reads as confident and grown-up rather than playful, and it tolerates being used in large blocks without becoming visually noisy.
Within the public brand-guidelines reference catalog, these are the closest matches to #87ABAB.
From the cultural-palette catalog, these regions feature a color close to #87ABAB.
Instead of stopping at one swatch, use nearby, opposite, and tonal neighbors to branch into a broader palette.
Base: Aqua Tone Muted #87ABAB Lighter companion: Aqua Silk Muted #9FBCBC Darker companion: Aqua Radiant Muted #759F9F Complementary counterpoint: Crimson Tone Muted #AB8787 Analogous lead: Steel Tone Muted #879CAB Analogous echo: Teal Tone Muted #87AB9F Triadic +120°: Fuchsia Tone Muted #AB87AB Triadic +240°: Citrine Tone Muted #ABAB87 Split-comp +150°: Blush Tone Muted #AB8799 Split-comp +210°: Coral Tone Muted #AB9987
See how Aqua Tone Muted compares side by side with related colors.
The closest archive matches by hue, saturation, and lightness.
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