Home Color Guides What Colors Make Turquoise
Turquoise is blue and green in agreement — but the default equal-parts blend actually lands on teal, the darker cousin. For the bright turquoise people picture (pool water, Caribbean shallows) the recipe leans green and lifts with white. Three routes below, computed swatch by swatch.
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Blend path between your colors
color-mix(in oklab, #0000ff 50%, #008000) Turquoise sits between blue and green but closer to green, at high brightness — think gemstone and tropical water. Teal is the same idea darker and bluer, which is why the naive blue-green 50/50 gives you teal, not turquoise. The fix is two dials: push the green, then add white for the glow.
None of this requires colors you do not have. Blue, green and white — the trio in the mixer below — cover the whole journey from deep teal to bright turquoise.
Every result below is computed in a perceptual color space: the swatch is the blend your eye sees, with the HEX code next to it. Click any code to copy it.
Equal parts give the deep blue-green that is properly called teal.
Start here to see the problem: the computed landing spot is a deep marine blue-green — handsome, but it is teal. Every turquoise recipe on this page is this blend plus two corrections.
Two parts green to one part blue rotates the blend onto the turquoise hue.
This is the hue of turquoise — the green lean does the work. The computed result is a deep turquoise, the gemstone register of the color.
Lift the green-heavy blend with white for pool-water turquoise.
White adds the brightness that separates turquoise from teal. More white walks it toward aqua and pastel pool tones; less keeps it saturated and gemmy.
Blue and green — but lean green, two parts to one, or the blend lands on teal instead. For bright turquoise, add white to lift the green-heavy blend toward pool-water tones.
Teal is darker and leans blue; turquoise is brighter and leans green. Both come from blue and green — the equal-parts blend gives teal, the green-heavy blend gives turquoise.
Blue and green in equal parts — the first computed blend on this page. The full ratio walk from teal to turquoise lives on the blue and green page.
Phthalo or sky blue with a green-leaning phthalo green, roughly one part blue to two parts green, then white to brighten. The green pigment matters: a blue-leaning green like phthalo keeps the mix clean.