Skip to main content

Tiffany Blue

#0ABAB5·blue family·WCAG AAA

Tints & Shades

50

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

Scale from white (50) through Tiffany Blue (500) to black (900), interpolated in Lab color space.

Color Values

HEX
#0ABAB5
RGB
rgb(10, 186, 181)
HSL
hsl(178, 90%, 38%)
OKLCH
oklch(0.713 0.122 191)
CMYK
cmyk(95%, 0%, 3%, 27%)
Luminance:0.3852
CSS var:--color-tiffany-blue
Tailwind:bg-[#0ABAB5]

Accessibility

Score: 48/100

On White (#FFF)

2.41:1

Fail

On Black (#000)

8.7:1

AAA

On Light Gray (#F5F5F5)

2.21:1

Fail

Best text color on this background:

black8.70:1
Open in Contrast Checker →

Design Applications

Background

background-color: #0ABAB5

Text Color

color: #0ABAB5

bg-[#0ABAB5] text-[#000000]

Accent border card component

border-left: 4px solid #0ABAB5

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 Tiffany Blue 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

Fails AA

4.5:1 minimum required

Large Text

Fails AA Large

3:1 minimum required

UI Components

Check contrast

3:1 for non-text UI

Tiffany Blue is a light color. Use black (#000000) text on top of it for maximum readability (8.70:1). Avoid white text on this background.

CSS & Code Examples

Background

background-color: #0ABAB5;

Text

color: #0ABAB5;

Border

border: 2px solid #0ABAB5;

Box Shadow

box-shadow: 0 4px 20px #0ABAB540;

Gradient

background: linear-gradient(135deg, #0ABAB5, #60ede7);

Tailwind-style

--color-tiffany-blue: #0ABAB5;

Tailwind CSS Utilities

Use arbitrary value syntax in Tailwind CSS to apply Tiffany Blue without a custom config.

Background

bg-[#0ABAB5]

Text

text-[#0ABAB5]

Border

border-[#0ABAB5]

Ring

ring-[#0ABAB5]

Fill

fill-[#0ABAB5]

From (gradient)

from-[#0ABAB5]

Via (gradient)

via-[#0ABAB5]

To (gradient)

to-[#0ABAB5]

Design Tokens

Ready-to-use Tiffany Blue design token in CSS custom properties, SCSS, Tailwind v3/v4, and JSON formats.

CSS Custom Properties

:root {
  --color-tiffany-blue: #0ABAB5;
  --color-tiffany-blue-rgb: 10, 186, 181;
  --color-tiffany-blue-hsl: 178, 90%, 38%;
}

SCSS Variables

$color-tiffany-blue: #0ABAB5;
$color-tiffany-blue-rgb: 10, 186, 181;
$color-tiffany-blue-hsl: 178, 90%, 38%;

Tailwind v3 Config

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      colors: {
        'tiffany-blue': '#0ABAB5',
      },
    },
  },
};

Tailwind v4 (@theme)

/* tailwind.css */
@theme {
  --color-tiffany-blue: #0ABAB5;
}

JSON Design Token (W3C format)

{
  "tiffany-blue": {
    "value": "#0ABAB5",
    "type": "color",
    "description": "Tiffany Blue — #0ABAB5"
  }
}

What Does Tiffany Blue 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. Tiffany Blue (#0ABAB5) distills this heritage into professionalism: 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).
  • Tiffany Blue's deep lightness (38%) shifts its psychological register: a balanced mid-tone that embodies trust, reliability, calm, and professionalism at its most direct.
  • At 90% saturation, Tiffany Blue 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.

In a world of visual noise, Tiffany Blue earns attention through steadiness. Use it where you need to be believed.

How to Use Tiffany Blue in Design: Applications, Pairings & Best Practices

Tiffany Blue's accessibility profile makes it one of the more designer-friendly choices in the warm-cool spectrum. Its deep quality at 38% lightness typically produces workable contrast ratios for both text and UI applications.

  • UI components: primary brand color, link color, interactive states—Tiffany Blue performs reliably in all these roles with its deep tonal character.
  • Brand & identity: corporate identity, banking and finance UIs, healthcare platforms—contexts where Tiffany Blue's vivid quality creates the right register.
  • Typography: Tiffany Blue as text requires a dark background; its 38% lightness means it provides 2.4:1 contrast on white, not meeting WCAG AA.
  • Tiffany Blue creates strong legibility with black text overlays (8.7:1 contrast ratio), making it a reliable background or surface color in design systems
  • Proportional use: Tiffany Blue's vivid saturation (90%) means small applications—accents, highlights, icons—deliver maximum impact without visual fatigue. Reserve large-scale use for intentional brand moments.

In a world of visual noise, Tiffany Blue earns attention through steadiness. Use it where you need to be believed.

Tiffany Blue Accessibility: WCAG Contrast Ratios, Color Blindness & Inclusive Design

Tiffany Blue (#0ABAB5) achieves a 8.70:1 contrast ratio with black text, surpassing the WCAG 2.1 AAA threshold of 7:1. This exceptional contrast qualifies it for body text, UI components at any size, and all accessibility-sensitive interface contexts. Relative luminance: 38.5%.

  • As text on white (#FFFFFF): 2.41:1 — Fail
  • As text on black (#000000): 8.70:1 — AAA ✓
  • Best text color on Tiffany Blue background: Black (#000000) at 8.70:1
  • WCAG 2.1 luminance: 38.5% — mid-range luminance—it sits in the transition zone where both dark and light text approaches require testing against the 4.5:1 WCAG threshold
  • Tiffany Blue qualifies for all text sizes including small body copy (AAA).
  • 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.

Tiffany Blue's WCAG profile makes it a compliant choice for most text applications.

Tiffany Blue in Industry: Branding, Design & Market Applications

Tiffany Blue (#0ABAB5) is most at home in industries where trust, reliability, calm, and professionalism are key brand values. Its deep quality makes it particularly effective in Finance & Banking contexts, where the vivid saturation signals calm at exactly the right register.

  • 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: Tiffany Blue is best suited for brands projecting trustworthiness, reliability, 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, Tiffany Blue works effectively in corporate identity, banking and finance UIs, healthcare platforms—contexts where calm serves a secondary but reinforcing role.

The industries where Tiffany Blue performs best are those where the audience expects calm. Build brand strategy around this alignment, not against it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the hex code for Tiffany Blue?
The hex code for Tiffany Blue is #0ABAB5. Its RGB values are rgb(10, 186, 181) and its HSL values are hsl(178, 90%, 38%).
What does Tiffany Blue 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 Tiffany Blue WCAG accessible?
Tiffany Blue (#0ABAB5) does not pass WCAG AA on white (2.41:1 ratio). Use it on dark backgrounds where it achieves 8.7:1. Its overall accessibility score is 48/100.
What colors go well with Tiffany Blue?
Tiffany Blue pairs well with its complementary color Red (#FF0000). Analogous colors like Patina and Jungle Green also work harmoniously. Check the Color Harmonies section above for the full palette.
What is Tiffany Blue used for?
Tiffany Blue 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 Tiffany Blue?
In CSS, use `color: #0ABAB5` or `background-color: #0ABAB5`. The CSS custom property is `--color-tiffany-blue: #0ABAB5`. In Tailwind CSS, use the arbitrary value class `bg-[#0ABAB5]` for backgrounds or `text-[#0ABAB5]` for text.