Riviera Blue: The Ninety Percent Turquoise That Divides Every Porsche Meet

No color in the Porsche catalog starts more conversations than Riviera Blue. Half the people at any meet will tell you it is the best color Porsche ever mixed. The other half will squint and ask if it is supposed to be blue or green. Both halves will keep staring at the car, which tells you everything.

What Riviera Blue actually is

Riviera Blue (Rivierablau) is a solid, non-metallic blue that leans hard toward turquoise. No flake, no pearl. In direct sunlight it goes almost tropical; in shade it settles into a deeper teal. That shift is not a flaw in your memory — the paint really does read differently through the day, and it is a big part of why owners obsess over it.

It belongs to the same early-nineties moment as Speed Yellow: Porsche putting loud, pure, confident solid colors on their most driver-focused cars. Factory code 39e.

Riviera Blue is not Mexico Blue

This deserves its own section because it is the single most common mix-up around this color, and it is exactly what people type into Google.

Mexico Blue is the older color, from the seventies, sitting closer to a pure sky blue. Riviera Blue is the nineties color — noticeably greener, deeper, more turquoise. Put the two side by side and nobody would confuse them. See either one alone on a car and even experienced Porsche people guess wrong.

If you own one of these cars, you know which one yours is, and you probably correct people regularly. A poster that gets this wrong would be worse than no poster at all. Mine does not get it wrong, and the next section explains why.

Which cars wore it

Riviera Blue is most famous on the nineties air-cooled cars, where it became one of the defining special colors of the era. It also appeared on the transaxle side of the family, which is where the Heckblick catalog picks it up: the 968 CS in Riviera Blue is one of the most striking configurations of that car, and it is also available on the 993 Carrera.

Why this color is a printing minefield

Riviera Blue is the hardest color in my catalog to reproduce, and I say that as someone who calibrated a pure yellow.

The problem is the green content. A few percent too much and the print reads as mint. A few percent too little and it collapses into an ordinary blue — which is arguably worse, because then the whole point of the color is gone. Matte fine art paper amplifies whatever tint is in the tone, so any screen-only approximation drifts in print, guaranteed.

My approach is the same as for every color in the catalog: the value is proofed on a physical test print, on the exact 200gsm matte stock I ship, in a 12-color giclée process, checked in daylight. Not approved until the print holds the turquoise character without tipping either way. The hex that survived that test is #01ADEB.

Put your Riviera Blue car on the wall

If you drive a Riviera Blue 968 CS or 993, the calibrated color is in the configurator now. Add your VIN and build year, and I personally review every order before anything goes to print.

Different model, same color? Send me a message. Custom builds are part of the offer.