What Is Teal?

 What is teal? Exactly, I mean. Does what you think it is match what I think it is?

I don’t mean “a teal”. That’s a duck, a very pretty duck, though others might find wood ducks or mandarin ducks much prettier. I have some preferences as to which ducks are tastier (avoid coot), but I have no reference for what the flavor of a teal is, even after growing up in a Minnesota hunting family. Above is a photo of one, a bit rumpled looking as I caught it in the process of bathing, lifting this feather, then the next. Lots of splashing was involved, along with individual feather preening, and an occasional dive.

            Oh yeah, you saw this one before. I guess I just like it.

It didn’t seem to mind how close I was to the very small pond alongside the road where I stopped the car to take some shots. I guess it knew these weren’t the kind of shots that made how it tasted relevant. Looks like its face still needs some work, unless that pale brown stripe isn’t supposed to be white.

When I ask whether your version of teal matches my version, I’m talking about the color that springs to mind when you hear the word. To me it’s a rich sort of green leaning blue, as opposed to leaning yellow.  Apparently to others it’s much more blue than it is to me, much like the difference of the two colors between the brown on this bird’s back. Toward its head is blue, below  and toward the tail is a small patch of darker green.

So why does it make a difference? I’ve been shopping. The new master bath is grey and grey-brown, plus some wood, white porcelain and plumbing metals. Color needed to be added. My last one had been revised from a very pale sea foam green with ugly yellow tiles, to more turquoise/green/grey, and dump the yellow. Here’s a sample of the shower make-over, pardon the flash reflection:

I didn’t get to enjoy it for long. But the colors haunted me, claiming me. Obviously a total shower re-do in a new and fully accessible bathroom would be ridiculous, but accent rugs or mats would work. I started my online search (after store searches had absolutely nothing appealing) with the first search word “teal”. I found a whole lot of offerings, including purples and fuchsias and royal blues. What’s with these people? It didn’t seem to matter whether I typed in bath mat or bath rugs, most offerings identified themselves with both words. Some, upon investigation, were definitely little area rugs, others were mats for the inside of a tub. A few were impossible to define, regardless of what the text claimed.

I wound up ordering three different designs. All claimed to be teal as their major color I must be searching for. In my definition, one can claim teal accurately. Another is a maybe.

The first to arrive was an abstract design, mostly a deep emerald green, combined with a paler green and some gold flecks, all in broad swirls. I did find a few small spots where a generous person could claim it to be teal. I’m still deciding just how generous a person I am. It is, after all, beautiful. I should quibble?

Both of the next two are floral designs, not tiny busy-busy flowers but huge, dramatic ones, and also beautiful. However the first one is best described as a powder or federal blue in tone, in varying intensities. The second is much more white, but the stripes of color through the petals actually fit my idea of teal… better anyway. Still, more blue than green.

Are you old enough to remember when there were always disclaimers that monitors were different and different ones captured colors differently? When I went through the options before ordering, I admit giving a bit of leeway to the color tones with that in mind. Except for the purples and fuchsias, of course. I have yet to find a camera which got purple the way I saw it without doing some color balancing in the software afterwards, and sometimes not even then. But I wasn’t shopping for purples.  What I saw on the screen was mighty close to what arrived. In other words, if I try this again in, say, 15 years when these wear out, I’ll try to remember to pay more attention to what shows in relation to what I’m looking for.

I’m not too displeased in the long run. Each one is a beauty in its own way, and all are miles above and beyond what the stores carry these days.

Just, maybe not so much actual teal in them, despite claims.  Sighhhhhhhh......