Turquoise Color: History, Hex Code & How to Mix It

What color is turquoise?

Full strength

Diluted

Pale wash

Graded wash

Hex	#40E0D0
RGB	64, 224, 208
CMYK	71, 0, 7, 12
Warm or cool	Cool, and about as cool as color gets, sitting at the midpoint of blue and green. It still reads as bright and lively rather than icy, because so much light sits inside it.
On the wheel	Turquoise sits exactly between blue and green on the color wheel, the point where the two coolest primaries meet. It leans a touch more green than a true cyan, which is why it can look aqua in one light and pool blue in another.

The story of turquoise

Turquoise is named after a country that has never mined an ounce of it.

The word came into English in the 1500s from the Old French turquois, meaning Turkish, because the stone reached European buyers by way of Ottoman Turkey. The turquoise itself came from Persia, where miners had worked deposits near Nishapur for at least two thousand years. Iranians called it pērōzah, victory, and used the blue of the finest stones to cover the domes of palaces and mosques, on the idea that it brought a piece of heaven down to earth. Turquoise mined in Iran turns green when it is heated, because the stone loses water as it warms, so a jeweler could watch the color shift in his own hands.

A round ceramic bowl glazed bright turquoise, painted in black and brown with seated courtly figures, birds, and a wave border along the rim — *Bowl with a Majlis Scene by a Pond*, Abu Zayd al-Kashani, dated 582 AH/1186 CE. Stonepaste, glazed in opaque turquoise with polychrome overglaze painting, 8.1 cm high, 21.6 cm diameter. This is the color as twelfth-century Iran actually made it, a glaze standing in for the mineral. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, public domain.

Egypt was mining turquoise even earlier, in the Sinai peninsula, from at least the First Dynasty around 3000 BCE. The people native to the region called it the Country of Turquoise, and two of its mines, Serabit el-Khadim and Wadi Maghareh, are among the oldest worked mines anywhere. The Egyptians liked the stone enough to fake it: when the real supply ran short they made faience, a glazed ceramic in the same blue-green, one of the first imitation gemstones anyone bothered to produce. Tutankhamun's burial mask carries the genuine article, set alongside lapis lazuli, carnelian, and colored glass.

A small seated baboon carved in pale turquoise-blue glazed faience, resting on a limestone base inscribed with hieroglyphs — *Baboon on a Limestone Base*, Egypt, Ptolemaic period, 380 to 30 BCE. Faience, 10 x 4.5 x 7.5 cm. Thoth's sacred animal, made in the glazed ceramic Egyptians turned to when real turquoise from Sinai ran short. The Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0.

Half a world away, with no contact between the two traditions, the American Southwest built its own turquoise culture on top of its own deposits, mined by hand in New Mexico long before Europeans arrived. Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache communities valued the stone as an amulet as much as a gem, and the Ancestral Puebloans of Chaco Canyon are thought to have grown wealthy trading it. The silver-and-turquoise jewelry now associated with the Navajo only dates to around 1880, a technique borrowed from European silversmiths and made entirely their own, and Zuni carvers still turn the lower grades of stone into small animal fetishes rather than waste them.

No watercolor pigment has ever matched this exact color, which is the real reason it barely turns up in paintings before photographs could just show it to you directly. What painters use now is a workaround: cobalt teal, which reads as a slightly chalky mineral turquoise, or a greener cobalt sold as cobalt turquoise, or simply a blue and a green mixed together wet on the palette. None of them are the stone. All of them are close enough.

I like that the name outlasted the mistake. Nobody thinks turquoise comes from Turkey anymore, not really, but we kept saying it anyway, the way you keep calling something by the name you learned first even after you know better.

Pigment facts

Colour Index	Not a pigment. A color name; in watercolor it is mixed from a blue and a green, or approximated with cobalt teal (PG50, a cobalt titanate spinel) or the greener cobalt sold as cobalt turquoise (PB36, a cobalt chromite spinel). No traditional single pigment ever matched it exactly.
Transparency	Depends on the route. Cobalt-based turquoises are semi-opaque and a little chalky, closer to the stone. A phthalo blue and green mix is transparent and glassy instead.
Lightfastness	Excellent either way. Cobalt pigments and modern phthalo blues and greens are all rated for permanence, so a turquoise mixed today should still look like turquoise in fifty years.
Granulation	Cobalt teal and cobalt turquoise granulate a little, breaking into texture across a wash. A phthalo-based mix stays smooth.
Staining	Low with the cobalt pigments, which sit on the surface and lift while damp. High with phthalo, which bites into the paper and will not budge once dry.
Toxicity	Non-toxic in normal studio use. The cobalt pigments carry the usual caution against ingesting them or breathing dry pigment dust, same as any other cobalt color.

These describe the pigment in general. Every brand's tube behaves a little differently, so test yours on scrap paper.

How to mix turquoise

You will not find a tube labeled the true turquoise, because no pigment hits it exactly. The closest single-pigment routes are cobalt teal or the greener cobalt turquoise. Failing that, mix a blue and a green together wet on the palette: cerulean blue softened with a touch of green gets close, and so does a phthalo blue cut with phthalo green.

The trap is going too bright. Straight from two saturated tubes, turquoise reads as a swimming pool rather than a sea. A whisper of its complement, an orange or a red-brown, knocks it back into something that looks like it belongs outdoors.

Mix	Recipe	Best for
Cobalt teal	Cobalt teal (PG50) alone, or lightened with water	A close single-pigment match to the gemstone
Cobalt turquoise	Cobalt turquoise (PB36), warmed with a touch of cerulean blue if it looks too green	A slightly chalkier, more mineral turquoise
Phthalo route	Phthalo blue with a small amount of phthalo green, diluted well	A bright, staining turquoise from two ordinary tubes
Grayed turquoise	Any of the above with a whisper of an orange or burnt sienna	Sea water in shade, a slate roof, anything less like a swimming pool
Pale wash	Any turquoise mix, heavily diluted	Sky reflected in shallow water, a glazed tile at a distance

Closest mix from the Tobio's kit

Glacier Blue already leans green, so it does most of the work on its own. Mix it with a little Forest Green for a deep sea turquoise, or Green Gold for a warmer, sunnier one. Either way, work in a touch of Titanium White, because turquoise on paper wants to look bright and slightly chalky, like the stone, not glassy like a dye. Add water gradually and stop before the white flattens it. Test on scrap first; too much white turns turquoise into a pastel mint.

The 12-color kit does not include a tube of turquoise, so this is how I get there with what is in the palette. Running low on a color? The 12 paint refills drop straight into the wells.

Using turquoise in watercolor

Reach for turquoise wherever water gets shallow enough to see through: a lagoon, a swimming pool, the band of color between deep sea blue and pale sand. It also earns a place in anything with a Southwestern or Persian theme, jewelry, tile work, a strip of sky behind a mosque dome.

Wet-on-wet is where it shines. Wet the paper, drop a turquoise mix along the horizon, and let it bloom outward so the edges stay soft the way real shallow water does. On dry paper it holds a clean, almost synthetic edge, which suits jewelry and glazed tile far better than open landscape.

It sits well against warm sand colors and corals, and it argues productively with a true ultramarine; the contrast between the two blues does a lot of the work of describing depth in open water.

One thing I had to learn: turquoise wants to take over a painting. It is so bright and so unusual that the eye goes straight to it, so use it in one place rather than scattered through a picture, or the whole thing starts to look like a pool party.

Everything I use on this page is the Tobio's Watercolor Kit: twelve colors chosen to mix, a walnut palette, cotton paper, and a water brush. Want to see how any two of the colors blend before you commit? Try the interactive color mixing chart.

Get the kit

Turquoise vs teal (and aqua)

Teal is turquoise pulled toward night. It is a dark cyan named after the stripe on a Eurasian teal duck's head rather than a stone, first recorded as a color name in 1917, more than three centuries after turquoise. Where turquoise stays light and bright, teal gets its depth from black or gray mixed into a plain cyan.

Aqua is the other one people confuse it with, and it is really just cyan under a friendlier name, split evenly between blue and green with none of turquoise's slight lean toward mineral green. Turquoise has more personality than either neighbor, because it is named for an object you can actually hold, not a duck or a description of water.

If turquoise is a shallow lagoon in full sun, teal is the same water after the sun goes down, and aqua is the swimming pool with the lights left on.

Questions people ask

What is the turquoise color hex code?

On screens, turquoise color is #40E0D0, a bright blue-green partway between cyan and mint. Paint versions run duller and a little chalkier than the screen color, closer to the stone itself.

Is turquoise warm or cool?

Cool. It sits exactly between blue and green on the wheel, the two coolest primary families, which is part of why it reads as refreshing rather than icy.

What colors make turquoise?

A blue with green mixed in, or a green with blue mixed in, depending which tube you start from. From the Tobio's kit, Glacier Blue with a touch of Forest Green or Green Gold, brightened with Titanium White.

Why is turquoise called turquoise?

The word comes from the Old French for Turkish, because the stone reached Europe through Ottoman Turkey even though it was mined in Persia. The name has stuck since the 1500s, misleading people about where it actually comes from.

Is turquoise a pigment or a color name?

A color name. No historical watercolor pigment ever matched the exact shade of the gemstone, which is one reason it rarely appears in paintings before the twentieth century. Modern painters mix it from a blue and a green, or use cobalt teal.

Turquoise vs teal, what is the difference?

Teal is turquoise pulled toward navy, darker and greener, named after a duck instead of a stone. Turquoise stays light and bright; teal reads as moodier and more muted.