Velvet Rime Ultramarine
Velvet Rime Ultramarine (#03309A) is a deep azure with a jewel character. It carries the deep, saturated richness of a gemstone. Authoritative and slightly formal, it works well for type and heavy UI elements. Its HSL profile (222°, 96%, 31%) places it in the highly saturated band at a dark 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
A short-pile woven fabric — silk, cotton, or rayon — whose densely packed vertical fibers absorb almost all incident light, producing a deeper black than the dye alone could give. The color refers to a black silk velvet: a deep, slightly muted black with the velvet's signature optical depth and the directional shading that distinguishes it from any flat fabric. Cooler than sable, deeper than ink.
Old English hrīm, hoar-frost-on-twigs. As a color modifier, rime implies a feathered-frost-and-fog-deposited quality, the visual register of Scottish-Highland-and-Cairngorm-rime hand-feathered-frost-and-fog-deposited Scottish-Highland-and-Cairngorm-rime-and-Pennine-cap rime-and-feathered-frost-and-fog-deposited surfaces under Scottish-Highland-and-Cairngorm-rime-and-Pennine-cap Cairngorm-Highlands-and-Scottish-Munro-and-Pennine-cap freezing-fog-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to hoar and sleet in usage.
The pigment ground from lapis lazuli — the Afghan mineral imported through Venice in the late Middle Ages, more expensive by weight than gold during the Renaissance. The color refers to a freshly mixed ultramarine pigment in linseed oil: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted deep blue with the matte finish of micron-ground rock. Deeper than cobalt, cooler than royal, with the art-historical weight of the blue Vermeer reserved for Mary's robe.
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.
Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.