Color conversion
#5a9ec8Boreal Harbor
CMYK profile: Coated FOGRA39 (Photoshop's default for Europe)
About this color
Calm competence with approachable clarity
A bright, mid-tone cyan-blue with a clean, slightly cooling clarity and moderate saturation. It evokes steady refreshment and lucid focus, like a calm harbor caught at midday light.
Designer tip
Use Boreal Harbor as the primary accent for interactive controls (buttons, highlights) on light backgrounds and pair it with a warm coral for CTAs to create high contrast and emotional balance.
Best use case
Psychology
Psychological traits and emotional associations
Effect
Emotional impact
Meaning & symbolism
Cultural symbolism and significance
Cultural significance
Positive associations
Negative associations
Design applications
How this color is used across different fields
- SaaS product UI
- Use Boreal Harbor for primary CTAs, progress indicators, and highlighted metrics to create clarity and trust while keeping the interface lively and legible.
- Healthcare branding
- Employ it on patient-facing touchpoints (apps, signage, brochures) to signal cleanliness and professional care without the sterility of pure clinical blue.
- Coastal residential interiors
- Apply as an accent wall or cabinetry finish in kitchens or bathrooms to evoke oceanic calm without overpowering neutral furnishings.
- Outdoor performance wear
- Offer it as a shell color on jackets and technical layers where visibility, freshness, and an association with water and air performance are desirable.
- Packaging for natural skincare
- Pair it with matte creams and warm neutrals on labels to suggest purity, hydration, and sustainable sensibility.
Design guidance
Practical tips for using this color effectively in your designs
Do this
- Use Boreal Harbor as an accent (buttons, icons, active states) against very light neutrals to preserve legibility and energetic balance.
- Pair it with a warm complementary coral for CTAs to create accessible contrast without harshness, using the coral at 20–30% stronger saturation than this blue.
- Use subtle gradients from this hex to a slightly deeper indigo for depth in large flat areas (e.g., header backgrounds) to avoid flatness.
Avoid this
- Don't use Boreal Harbor as the sole background color for long-form reading surfaces where eye fatigue can increase.
- Don't pair it with saturated emerald greens—these adjacent high-chroma colors compete and create visual tension.
- Don't rely on low-contrast light gray text on top of this color; ensure WCAG contrast for accessibility.
Fundamentals
Overuse risk
Brand fit
Industries and brand archetypes that align with this color
Trust level
Seriousness
Trend
Color pairing
Colors that complement and enhance this shade
#C87A5A
Warm coral complementary contrast (complementary harmony) creates energetic CTAs and emotional balance against the cool blue.
#5AC8B8
Soft teal-analogous (analogous harmony) provides a gentle, aquatic palette for calming UI and interiors.
#C8B55A
Muted golden-ochre (split-complementary feel) adds warmth and groundedness while maintaining vibrancy and readable contrast.
Typography hints
Historical significance
The story and heritage of this color
This mid-cerulean sits in the lineage of cerulean and cobalt blues that entered artists' palettes in the 18th and 19th centuries; cerulean pigments (cobalt stannate) were synthesized in the early 1800s and provided painters a stable, lightfast cool blue useful for skies and waters. Earlier marine blues were achieved with azurite or indigo mixtures, but the cleaner, slightly greener mid-tones similar to Boreal Harbor became feasible with modern inorganic pigments.
In art and design, mid-cerulean and related blues were staples for maritime painting, 19th-century seascapes, and later for mid-century modern designers who favored clear, saturated colors. Architects and product designers in the 20th century used these blues to communicate hygiene and modernity—think clinic tiles, industrial ceramics, and the slick plastics of the 1950s and 1960s.
Today Boreal Harbor appears across digital product systems, outdoor apparel, and coastal hospitality interiors where a balance of freshness and trust is required. Its longevity is tied to its versatility: it reads as contemporary in UI, reassuring in healthcare, and evocative in lifestyle contexts, ensuring ongoing relevance rather than a fleeting trend.
Variations
The purpose of this section is to accurately produce tints (pure white added) and shades (pure black added) of your selected color in 10% increments.
Pro tip: Use shades for hover states and shadows, tints for highlights and backgrounds.
Shades
Darker variations created by adding black to your base color.
Tints
Lighter variations created by adding white to your base color.
Common use cases
- • UI component states (hover, active, disabled)
- • Creating depth with shadows and highlights
- • Building consistent color systems
Design system tip
These variations form the foundation of a cohesive color palette. Export them to maintain consistency across your entire project.
Color combinations
Each harmony has its own mood. Use harmonies to brainstorm color combos that work well together.
How to use
Click on any color to copy its hex value. These combinations are mathematically proven to create visual harmony.
Why it matters
Color harmonies create balance and evoke specific emotions in your designs.
Complement
A color and its opposite on the color wheel, +180 degrees of hue. High contrast.
Split-complementary
A color and two adjacent to its complement, +/-30 degrees of hue from the value opposite the main color. Bold like a straight complement, but more versatile.
Triadic
Three colors spaced evenly along the color wheel, each 120 degrees of hue apart. Best to allow one color to dominate and use the others as accents.
Analogous
Three colors of the same luminance and saturation with hues that are adjacent on the color wheel, 30 degrees apart. Smooth transitions.
Monochromatic
Three colors of the same hue with luminance values +/-50%. Subtle and refined.
Tetradic
Two sets of complementary colors, separated by 60 degrees of hue.
Color theory principles
Balance
Use one dominant color, support with secondary, and accent sparingly.
Contrast
Ensure sufficient contrast for readability and accessibility.
Harmony
Colors should work together to create a unified visual experience.
Color contrast checker
Test color combinations to ensure they meet WCAG accessibility standards for text readability.
Contrast
WCAG standards
Advanced contrast checker
Fine-tune with sliders, multiple previews & more
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Technical formats
Explore advanced color space representations and professional color models used in video production, photography, scientific applications, and color management systems. These technical formats provide precise color specifications for specialized industries and applications.
Practical formats
Convert colors to practical formats for real-world applications including print simulation, LED displays, terminal output, and data encoding. These formats help you implement colors across different media, platforms, and physical devices.
Color analysis
Analyze color properties with advanced metrics including spectral composition, color purity, metamerism effects, and perceptual characteristics. These tools provide deep insights into color behavior and appearance under different viewing conditions.
Blindness simulator
Check how a color is perceived by people with different types of color blindness to create more accessible designs. Understanding color perception helps ensure your content is accessible to everyone.
Creative aspects
Explore the artistic and psychological dimensions of colors including seasonal associations, emotional impact, natural occurrences, historical pigments, and color mixing recipes for creative applications.