Sonorous Gold Royal
Sonorous Gold Royal (#0260D9) is a true azure with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (214°, 98%, 43%) places it in the highly saturated band at a mid lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary orange. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin sonōrus, resounding — derived from sonus (sound). As a color modifier, sonorous implies a saturated-and-richly-vibrating quality where the hue carries the deep-resonance visual register of a cathedral-organ-pipe low-note. Sits at the bold-and-resonant end of the grid, parallel to resonant and deep in usage.
Old English gold, gold. As a color modifier, gold implies a precious-malleable-metal quality, the visual register of hand-beaten-and-rolled-gold hand-beaten-gold-leaf-and-coin-and-bar Egyptian-and-Italian-Renaissance hand-beaten-gold-leaf surfaces under Egyptian-and-Renaissance hand-beaten-gold-leaf treasury-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to gilt and gloss in usage.
The blue of European royal court dress and regalia from the late seventeenth century forward — the color of British peers' robes, French royal sashes, the lining of the crown-jewel cases. The color refers to a saturated, slightly violet-shifted blue with the matte finish of velvet or melton wool dyed to maximum intensity: deeper than cornflower, warmer than ultramarine, with the heraldic weight of a color reserved for monarchs and the official Crown.
Closest matches
The nearest named color in three reference sources, ranked by perceptual distance (ΔE76 in CIELAB). ΔE < 1 is imperceptible to most viewers; ΔE > 10 is clearly different. When two sources point to the same hex they’re merged into one tile; click any to open that color’s page.
Variations
Click any swatch to exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
How this color appears to viewers with the four major color-vision-deficiency types. Computed via the Machado (2009) physiologically-based model. If a tile matches the original, the color reads the same to that viewer.
The color used as foreground text against pure white and pure black, with the contrast ratio and WCAG 2.1 grade. Aim for AA (4.5:1) for body text and AA Large (3:1) for 18 pt+ headlines; AAA (7:1) is the gold standard for long-form reading surfaces.
Wide gamut
The CSS Color 4 wide-gamut form of this color. Both swatches render the same color on every display — the P3 form only diverges from sRGB when a designer pushes channels outside sRGB's reach.
This color is chromatic enough that authoring it as P3 native (instead of clamping to sRGB) gives a perceptibly more saturated render on wide-gamut displays — modern Macs, iPhones, iPads, and most recent OLED laptops.