Tints & Shades
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Scale from white (50) through Cerulean (500) to black (900), interpolated in Lab color space.
Color Values
- HEX
- #007BA7
- RGB
- rgb(0, 123, 167)
- HSL
- hsl(196, 100%, 33%)
- OKLCH
- oklch(0.548 0.112 232)
- CMYK
- cmyk(100%, 26%, 0%, 35%)
--color-ceruleanbg-[#007BA7]Accessibility
Score: 39/100On White (#FFF)
4.78:1
On Black (#000)
4.39:1
On Light Gray (#F5F5F5)
4.39:1
Best text color on this background:
Design Applications
background-color: #007BA7
color: #007BA7
bg-[#007BA7] text-[#FFFFFF]
border-left: 4px solid #007BA7
Color Harmonies
Complementary
Coral
#FF7F50
Split-Complementary
Similar Colors
Color Meaning & Psychology
Blue is the world's most universally preferred color across cultures. It slows respiration, lowers blood pressure, and promotes calm — the physiological opposite of red. Blue's associations with sky and water make it feel limitless, trustworthy, and reliable. In corporate design, blue dominates banking, insurance, healthcare, and technology precisely because it communicates stability. Dark navy conveys authority and tradition; royal blues suggest quality and aspiration; sky blues feel open and optimistic; teal bridges trust with modernity. The primary limitation of blue is food — it suppresses appetite, with almost no naturally blue foods existing in nature. Its deeper, richer tone gives it gravitas and sophistication, making it well-suited for primary brand colors, typography, and contexts where authority matters.
Industry Usage
Common contexts and industries where Cerulean is applied in professional design.
- Banking, insurance, and financial institutions
- Healthcare and medical device companies
- Enterprise software and SaaS platforms
- Government and public sector organizations
- Airlines and aviation brands
- Communication and social networking apps
- Cybersecurity and data protection products
- Pharmaceutical companies and clinical products
Accessibility Considerations
Normal Text
Passes AA
4.5:1 minimum required
Large Text
Passes AA Large
3:1 minimum required
UI Components
Meets 1.4.11
3:1 for non-text UI
Cerulean is a dark color. Use white (#FFFFFF) text on top of it for maximum readability (4.78:1). Avoid small black text on this background.
CSS & Code Examples
Background
background-color: #007BA7;Text
color: #007BA7;Border
border: 2px solid #007BA7;Box Shadow
box-shadow: 0 4px 20px #007BA740;Gradient
background: linear-gradient(135deg, #007BA7, #53aad9);Tailwind-style
--color-cerulean: #007BA7;Tailwind CSS Utilities
Use arbitrary value syntax in Tailwind CSS to apply Cerulean without a custom config.
Background
bg-[#007BA7]Text
text-[#007BA7]Border
border-[#007BA7]Ring
ring-[#007BA7]Fill
fill-[#007BA7]From (gradient)
from-[#007BA7]Via (gradient)
via-[#007BA7]To (gradient)
to-[#007BA7]Design Tokens
Ready-to-use Cerulean design token in CSS custom properties, SCSS, Tailwind v3/v4, and JSON formats.
CSS Custom Properties
:root {
--color-cerulean: #007BA7;
--color-cerulean-rgb: 0, 123, 167;
--color-cerulean-hsl: 196, 100%, 33%;
}SCSS Variables
$color-cerulean: #007BA7; $color-cerulean-rgb: 0, 123, 167; $color-cerulean-hsl: 196, 100%, 33%;
Tailwind v3 Config
// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
theme: {
extend: {
colors: {
'cerulean': '#007BA7',
},
},
},
};Tailwind v4 (@theme)
/* tailwind.css */
@theme {
--color-cerulean: #007BA7;
}JSON Design Token (W3C format)
{
"cerulean": {
"value": "#007BA7",
"type": "color",
"description": "Cerulean — #007BA7"
}
}Related Palettes & Combinations
Color Combinations
More blue colors
View all →What Does Cerulean Mean? Color Psychology & Cultural Symbolism
Blue is the world's most preferred color across gender, age, and culture—a distinction that reflects its deep psychological function. Cerulean (#007BA7) distills this heritage into calm: a quality the human brain processes as fundamentally safe, competent, and reliable.
- Blue is the most universally trusted color in Western design—associated with authority (government, police, corporate), intelligence (universities, technology), and emotional calm (water, sky). It's the dominant color in corporate branding precisely because it creates immediate credibility.
- In Chinese tradition, blue represents immortality and the heavens, associated with the element of wood and spring vitality. In many Islamic cultures, blue offers protection from evil (the "evil eye" tradition), and in Indian traditions it's associated with divinity (Krishna).
- Cerulean's deep lightness (33%) shifts its psychological register: Navy and deep blues project gravitas, authority, and executive-level trust—the dominant choice for financial services, law firms, and premium B2B brands.
- At 100% saturation, Cerulean reads as vivid—Electric and royal blues are modern, confident, and digitally native—they signal tech-forward positioning and work well for startups challenging traditional industries.
Cerulean doesn't need to announce itself—it simply makes everything around it feel more reliable.
How to Use Cerulean in Design: Applications, Pairings & Best Practices
Cerulean is a workhorse color in design systems—reliable in both semantic (interactive, informational) and aesthetic (trusted, professional) roles. Its vivid saturation means it performs across both digital and print contexts without fatigue.
- UI components: primary brand color, link color, interactive states—Cerulean performs reliably in all these roles with its deep tonal character.
- Brand & identity: corporate identity, banking and finance UIs, healthcare platforms—contexts where Cerulean's vivid quality creates the right register.
- Typography: Cerulean works as a background behind white text but requires careful sizing—test at intended heading and body sizes before finalizing.
- As a dark tone, Cerulean creates maximum contrast with white and light neutrals—excellent for creating premium dark-mode sections, bold headers, and high-drama brand moments
- Proportional use: Cerulean's vivid saturation (100%) means small applications—accents, highlights, icons—deliver maximum impact without visual fatigue. Reserve large-scale use for intentional brand moments.
Cerulean doesn't need to announce itself—it simply makes everything around it feel more reliable.
Cerulean Accessibility: WCAG Contrast Ratios, Color Blindness & Inclusive Design
Cerulean (#007BA7) reaches 4.78:1 contrast with white text—meeting WCAG 2.1 AA minimum of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. It clears standard production accessibility requirements. Relative luminance: 17.0%.
- As text on white (#FFFFFF): 4.78:1 — AA ✓
- As text on black (#000000): 4.39:1 — AA (large text only)
- Best text color on Cerulean background: White (#FFFFFF) at 4.78:1
- WCAG 2.1 luminance: 17.0% — low luminance (dark)—it provides strong contrast for white and light overlaid text, functioning well as a background in dark-mode and header contexts
- Cerulean qualifies for normal body text and all larger sizes (AA).
- Color blindness consideration: tritanopia (blue-yellow color blindness, ~0.003% of population) may affect how this color reads. While rare, for maximum accessibility supplement color signals with text or icon indicators in critical states.
Always verify Cerulean at its final intended size and weight using a real contrast checker—font weight and rendering environment affect perceived legibility beyond what raw ratios capture.
Cerulean in Industry: Branding, Design & Market Applications
Cerulean's brand positioning falls squarely in the territory of trust, reliability, calm, and professionalism. Industry data supports its strongest performance in finance, technology, healthcare categories, where the vivid saturation calibrates the message at a deep, considered level.
- Finance & Banking: Blue is the most trusted color in financial services—a global design convention built over decades. It signals fiduciary reliability, stability, and the conservative stewardship that depositors and investors need to feel comfortable transferring wealth. (examples: Capital One, PayPal, Visa) Dark navy communicates established tradition; mid-tone blues suggest accessible, modern banking. Avoid pure bright blue for legacy institutions.
- Technology: Technology brands use blue to communicate intelligence, reliability, and forward-thinking professionalism. From legacy enterprise software to consumer apps, blue provides a neutral credibility that scales across markets and cultures. (examples: Apple, Microsoft, Salesforce) Varying the tone of blue is how tech brands differentiate: sky blue for friendliness (consumer apps), royal blue for confidence (productivity tools), navy for enterprise seriousness.
- Healthcare: Healthcare's use of blue is a trust transfer from corporate credibility to clinical reliability. Patients associate blue with cleanliness, precision, and medical competence—making it the second most common healthcare color after white. (examples: Headspace, One Medical, Kaiser Permanente) Teal-blue works particularly well for health tech and telemedicine, balancing clinical trust with digital accessibility.
- Brand positioning: Cerulean is best suited for brands projecting stability, competence, professionalism. Categories outside this positioning—food contexts where it suppresses appetite (the only major color with no natural blue foods)—tend to see weaker results.
- Adjacent applications: Beyond primary industries, Cerulean works effectively in trust-critical applications, government services, B2B software—contexts where professionalism serves a secondary but reinforcing role.
For marketers and brand strategists, Cerulean is a commitment to trust, reliability, calm, and professionalism. Match it with industries that make that promise and it will pay dividends consistently.
Accessibility & Design Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the hex code for Cerulean? ▾
- The hex code for Cerulean is #007BA7. Its RGB values are rgb(0, 123, 167) and its HSL values are hsl(196, 100%, 33%).
- What does Cerulean mean in design? ▾
- Blue is the world's most universally preferred color across cultures. It slows respiration, lowers blood pressure, and promotes calm — the physiological opposite of red. Blue's associations with sky and water make it feel limitless, trustworthy, and reliable. In corporate design, blue dominates banking, insurance, healthcare, and technology precisely because it communicates stability. Dark navy conveys authority and tradition; royal blues suggest quality and aspiration; sky blues feel open and optimistic; teal bridges trust with modernity. The primary limitation of blue is food — it suppresses appetite, with almost no naturally blue foods existing in nature. Its deeper, richer tone gives it gravitas and sophistication, making it well-suited for primary brand colors, typography, and contexts where authority matters.
- Is Cerulean WCAG accessible? ▾
- Cerulean (#007BA7) passes WCAG AA on white with a 4.78:1 contrast ratio. Its overall accessibility score is 39/100.
- What colors go well with Cerulean? ▾
- Cerulean pairs well with its complementary color Coral (#FF7F50). Analogous colors like Persian Teal and Dark Turquoise also work harmoniously. Check the Color Harmonies section above for the full palette.
- What is Cerulean used for? ▾
- Cerulean is commonly used for: Banking, insurance, and financial institutions; Healthcare and medical device companies; Enterprise software and SaaS platforms; Government and public sector organizations; Airlines and aviation brands.
- What are the CSS and Tailwind values for Cerulean? ▾
- In CSS, use `color: #007BA7` or `background-color: #007BA7`. The CSS custom property is `--color-cerulean: #007BA7`. In Tailwind CSS, use the arbitrary value class `bg-[#007BA7]` for backgrounds or `text-[#007BA7]` for text.