Browse sea color palettes with teal, ocean blue, foam, and deep-water tones for wellness products, travel brands, dashboards, and calm interfaces.
Sea palettes run from near-black deep water through teal to pale foam, so most already contain a text color, a surface color and something in between. The in-between teals are where care is needed.
Nearly 60% of the swatches in these 187 sea palettes fall in the teal and cyan band, and unlike sky palettes, both ends of the value range are well represented: about 15% of swatches are very dark and 12% very light. A typical palette reads like a depth chart, for example #04364A for deep water, #176B87 for mid-water, #64CCC5 for the shallows and #DAFFFB for foam.
That built-in range is what makes sea palettes practical for interfaces. The dark end handles text and navigation, the light end handles surfaces, and the middle has to be chosen carefully.
Mid teals are the colors people most want to use for buttons and the ones that most often fail. Here is how the depth-chart palette above behaves:
An all-teal interface has no obvious place to click. Several sea palettes already include a beach color: #192655, #3876BF, #E1AA74, #F3F0CA is one. Navy #192655 on sand #E1AA74 measures 7.04:1, which makes sand a usable primary button with a navy label.
The same palette has a near miss: #3876BF on #F3F0CA is 4.02:1, under the 4.5:1 needed for body text. Use that blue for large headings and icons, and let navy carry paragraphs (12.50:1 on the same background).
Use deep water for text and navigation, foam for surfaces and one mid teal for interaction. Sand, wheat or a warm yellow such as #E1AA74 or #FFC436 gives the single warm accent that shows people where to click.
Mid teals look darker than they measure. White on #35A29F is 3.08:1 and on #419197 3.67:1, both short of 4.5:1, while white on #12486B is 9.70:1. Test status chips and small labels on each teal you use.
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