Short answer
Neither, strictly: teal names a dark blue-green that sits in the gap English leaves between the colours it calls green and the colours it calls blue. Measured from published values, teal is nearer green than blue — ΔE00 27.8 from CSS green against 39.0 from CSS blue — but whether a speaker files it under 'blue' or 'green' is a habit of language, not a property of the colour.
In the Colourwise lexicon, green covers hues 125°–160° in OKLCH and blue covers 240°–275°. Teal's region covers 175°–215°, which lies entirely in the gap between them: of the sRGB grid colours inside teal, 0% are also inside green and 0% inside blue. The CSS teal swatch has a hue of about 195°, 52° from CSS green and 69° from CSS blue, and 72% of the colours in teal's region are nearer green's hue angle than blue's. The crowd survey agrees on direction: its teal is ΔE00 25.7 from its green and 43.2 from its blue.
Hue angle is a rough guide only: OKLCH is close to perceptually even, not perfectly so, and a colour's lightness and chroma change how its hue is judged.
English has eleven basic colour terms, and none of them is centred on blue-green. The region is instead covered by secondary words — teal, turquoise, aqua, cyan, petrol — each borrowed from something else and each with its own, unsettled edges. That is why teal keeps being argued over: the question 'blue or green?' asks which of two basic words should absorb a colour that neither was built for. Many of the world's languages draw the line elsewhere or not at all, and some have one term across what English calls green and blue. Even then the single term is not simply English green plus English blue joined up; in one study, Somali speakers who used one word for both did not use it for every sample English speakers called green or blue.
Teal is the name of a small freshwater duck, recorded in English from about 1300. The drake has a band of dark blue-green on its head, and the colour sense grew from that. It is young as colour words go: the etymology record finds it in clothing advertisements from 1923, against 1853 for turquoise and 1889 for cyan. A word that entered through fashion copy, not through a pigment or a standard, never had a single swatch fixed to it, which is why paint ranges, clothing retailers and screen palettes still use it for colours from a greyed green to a deep blue. The CSS keyword is one fixed point in that spread, not the definition.
On screens, CSS teal is #008080: no red, and green and blue at exactly the same level. In RGB terms it is literally equal parts green light and blue light, which is the strongest case for calling it blue-green rather than choosing one. The same keyword list sets 'turquoise' to a much lighter, brighter value and makes 'cyan' and 'aqua' identical. So even the one body that fixes values for these names does not give teal a boundary; it gives a single point and leaves the region to usage. The practical consequence is that 'teal' in a brief, a product listing or a design token tells you the neighbourhood and nothing finer.
| Term | Hue range | Lightness range | Reference (hue) | ΔE00 from teal's reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Green | 125°–160° | 0.40–0.85 | #008000 (h 142°) | 27.8 |
| Emerald | 145°–162° | 0.55–0.78 | #50c878 (h 152°) | 30.5 |
| Aquamarine | 162°–180° | 0.75–0.94 | #7fffd4 (h 169°) | 36.3 |
| Turquoise | 172°–200° | 0.65–0.88 | #40e0d0 (h 185°) | 28.1 |
| Aqua | 172°–200° | 0.78–0.95 | #13eac9 (h 177°) | 31.1 |
| Teal | 175°–215° | 0.40–0.65 | #008080 (h 195°) | — |
| Cyan | 190°–215° | 0.78–0.95 | #00ffff (h 195°) | 34.0 |
| Sky blue | 220°–252° | 0.72–0.88 | #87ceeb (h 226°) | 28.7 |
| Blue | 240°–275° | 0.35–0.75 | #0000ff (h 264°) | 39.0 |
| Teal | Green | Shared by both | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lightness (L) | 0.40–0.65 | 0.40–0.85 | 0.40–0.65 |
| Chroma (C) | 0.060–0.140 | 0.100–0.300 | 0.100–0.140 |
| Hue (h) | 175°–215° | 125°–160° | none |
| Reference swatch | #008080 (L 0.54, C 0.093, h 195°) | #008000 (L 0.52, C 0.177, h 142°) | ΔE00 27.8 apart |
| sRGB grid colours inside | 69 | 790 | 0 (0% of teal, 0% of green) |
| How settled the word is | high | low | — |
Why: The seller's teal sits at one end of a name that covers a wide hue band, and the photo was judged on a different screen.
Fix: Ask for a HEX, a paint or textile reference, or a photographed physical swatch beside a white card, rather than relying on the name.
Why: Each is extending a different basic term into the gap; neither is wrong about the colour.
Fix: Label series by value or by role, not by colour name, and check the palette's distinctness with a palette checker.
Each statement is labelled by kind — established fact, a standard’s requirement, observed market data, a convention, or Colourwise’s own interpretation or analysis — with the strength of the evidence behind it.
Colourwise analysisModerate evidence
Measured in CIEDE2000, the CSS teal value (#008080) is 27.8 from CSS green and 39.0 from CSS blue; the xkcd survey's teal is 25.7 from its green and 43.2 from its blue.
Based on: CIEDE2000 computed by Colourwise from the published sRGB values of each named colour.
Caveat: Distances to the basic-term swatches depend on which green and blue are chosen; the conclusion 'nearer green' holds for both sources used here, not for every possible green.
Source: CSS Color Module Level 4; Color survey results, and the rgb.txt list of the 954 most common colour names
StandardStrong evidence
CSS Color Level 4 defines teal as #008080: zero red with equal green and blue components.
Source: CSS Color Module Level 4
FactModerate evidence
Teal was the name of a small freshwater duck from about 1300; as the name of a dark greenish-blue it is attested from 1923, in clothing advertisements.
Caveat: First-attestation dates move when earlier uses are found.
Source: Online Etymology Dictionary
FactLimited evidence
Some speakers of Somali name both green and blue samples with a single term, but that term does not cover everything English speakers call green or blue.
Caveat: Based on small groups of speakers in one study; it shows that a one-word blue-green category is not a simple merger, not how common such categories are.
Colourwise interpretationModerate evidence
Whether teal is called blue or green is decided by which basic term a speaker habitually extends into the blue-green gap, not by any measurement of the colour.
Based on: Teal's region lies outside both the green and blue regions in the lexicon, and published values place it between them; no source defines a boundary that assigns it to one.
Reviewed 29 September 2026. Colourwise summarises its sources in its own words and does not reproduce standards text or proprietary colour data. Spotted an error? Tell us.