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Cyan

Hex #00FFFF, rgb(0 255 255). A cyan or teal CSS named color.

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Cyan color codes

Click any value to copy it.

HEX
RGB
HSL
HSV
HWB
CMYK
OKLCH
OKLab
Lab
LCH
CSS keyword

About Cyan

Cyan is a very light saturated cyan-teal with the hex code #00FFFF. In RGB it is made of 0 red, 255 green and 255 blue; in HSL its hue is 180°, with 100% saturation and 50% lightness. Its perceptual lightness (OKLCH L) is 90.5%.

It is a CSS named color, so you can write "cyan" or "aqua" anywhere CSS accepts a color. Against white it has a contrast ratio of 1.25:1 and against black 16.75:1, so black text reads better on it and passes WCAG AA for normal text.

Also written as Aqua: CSS treats both spellings as the same color.

Tints, shades and tones

Cyan mixed step by step with white, black and middle gray (#808080).

Tints (with white)

Shades (with black)

Tones (with gray)

Cyan 50-950 scale

A Tailwind-style scale built in OKLCH; the original color sits on the step with the closest lightness.

Colors that go with Cyan

Color harmonies rotate the hue in OKLCH and keep the lightness and chroma. Each color links to its closest named color.

Complementary

Analogous

Triadic

Split complementary

Tetradic

Square

Monochromatic

Contrast and readability

WCAG 2 contrast of Cyan with white and black. The readable text color on Cyan is black.

Cyan textSmall text on white

On white1.25:1

  • AA fail
  • AA Large fail
  • AAA fail
  • UI 3:1 fail

APCA Lc 12

Cyan textSmall text on black

On black16.75:1

  • AA pass
  • AA Large pass
  • AAA pass
  • UI 3:1 pass

APCA Lc -92

Black text on Cyan (#000000)

Test any pair in the contrast checker.

Color blindness preview

How Cyan appears with each type of color vision deficiency (simulated with the Machado model).

  • Protanopia#EDF2FF
  • Deuteranopia#D0DDFF
  • Tritanopia#00FFFE
  • Protanomaly#CEF3FF
  • Deuteranomaly#BCE6FF
  • Tritanomaly#00FFFF
  • Achromatopsia#E5E5E5

Colors similar to Cyan

The closest named colors by perceptual difference (OKLab).

Use Cyan in CSS and Tailwind

CSS
.cyan {
  color: cyan; /* #00FFFF */
  background-color: rgb(0 255 255);
  border-color: oklch(90.5% 0.155 194.8);
}
Tailwind CSS
/* Tailwind CSS v4: bg-cyan-500, text-cyan-700... */
@theme {
  --color-cyan-50: #EBFFFE;
  --color-cyan-100: #B7FFFE;
  --color-cyan-200: #00FFFF;
  --color-cyan-300: #00DFDF;
  --color-cyan-400: #00B6B6;
  --color-cyan-500: #009C9C;
  --color-cyan-600: #008585;
  --color-cyan-700: #006B6B;
  --color-cyan-800: #005656;
  --color-cyan-900: #004646;
  --color-cyan-950: #001B1B;
}

<!-- or the exact color, no config -->
<div class="bg-[#00FFFF] text-[#000000]">…</div>