What color is aqua?

Aqua is a bluish-green color, similar to the color of water off of a tropical beach. The term "aqua" is a synonym for cyan when discussing Web colors and electronic displays that use the RGB color model. The cyan used in printers is not quite the same color.

The cyan used in printers is a slightly darker shade of bluish-green, closer to turquoise than to aqua. This cyan is used as a primary color to generate other colors, while the cyan/aqua used by electronic displays is a secondary color, made by combining fully saturated blue and fully saturated green light in equal amounts. This produces a vivid color similar to a clear sky in strong daylight. Aqua is also sometimes called electric cyan.