A vivid light green, black text passes AA
What color is lime?
The CSS named color lime is #00ff00, or rgb(0 255 0): a vivid light green in plain words. Black text on it reaches 15.30:1, passing WCAG AAA, and Recolor (recolor.page) can put it on a real page.
Last updated
| Format | Value |
|---|---|
| Keyword | lime |
| Hex | #00ff00 |
| RGB | rgb(0 255 0) |
| HSL | hsl(120 100% 50%) |
| OKLCH | oklch(86.6% 0.295 142.5) |
| Nearest Tailwind color | lime-400 #9ae600, 0.093 away in OKLab |
| White text | 1.37:1: AA fails, AAA fails, large text fails |
| Black text | 15.30:1: AA passes, AAA passes, large text passes |
About lime
A vivid light green is the plain description of lime: OKLCH lightness 86.6%, chroma 0.295, hue 142.5 degrees. CSS Color 4 counts it among the 16 names that came from the VGA palette and then HTML; most of the other names came from the X11 color system.
Its HSL lightness, 50%, says little about how light lime looks; OKLCH, made to match the eye, measures 86.6%, 37 points away. The closest CSS named color is lawngreen (#7cfc00), 0.047 away in OKLab: near, and still a visible step from it side by side.
Black text on lime measures 15.30:1, past the 7:1 of WCAG AAA, while white text manages only 1.37:1. Its neighbors in the hue-sorted list of names are mediumspringgreen and mediumaquamarine.
The closest Tailwind 4.3.3 color is lime-400, 0.093 away in OKLab, so bg-lime-400 comes near; bg-[#00ff00] gives the color itself.
Tints and shades
- #e5ffe3
- #cbffc5
- #adffa6
- #8cff84
- #62ff5b
- #00ff00
- #00c800
- #009400
- #006300
- #003600
- #000f00
From light to dark: 5 toward white and 5 toward black, mixed in OKLCH a sixth of the way at a time with the hue kept. A step that would repeat its neighbor is left out.
A palette around it
- #00ff00
- #53516a
- #aecbaa
- #132413
- #a4798a
Recolor's generator, with lime locked as swatch 1 and the seed taken from its hex, drew a split-complementary palette, built on the two hues beside its opposite: #53516a, #aecbaa, #132413, #a4798a. Open it in Recolor.
Using lime
As a text color, lime on a black page gives the same 15.30:1.
.notice {
background-color: lime; /* #00ff00 */
color: black; /* 15.30:1 */
}Common questions
Does white text pass WCAG AA on lime?
No. White text measures 1.37:1 on lime, under AA's 4.5:1; black text measures 15.30:1 and passes.
Can lime be written in OKLCH?
Yes: oklch(86.6% 0.295 142.5), computed from #00ff00. A named color is an sRGB color, so its OKLCH value converts back to the same hex.
Is there a named color close to lime?
Yes: lawngreen (#7cfc00) is the nearest, 0.047 away in OKLab, then chartreuse at 0.050.