Provincial Ink
Provincial Ink (#050838) is a deep blue 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 (236°, 84%, 12%) 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 yellow. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin prōvinciālis, of-a-province — adjectival suffix -al. As a color modifier, provincial implies a neutral-and-regional-and-traditional quality, the neutral color of French-Provincial-Provençal and Italian-Tuscan-Provincial regional-tradition interior-decoration-and-textile surface-finish. Sits at the neutral-and-traditional end of the grid, parallel to regional and country in usage.
A dark fluid for writing or printing — historically gallic-acid-and-iron-sulfate solutions for European manuscript ink, lampblack-and-glue suspensions for Chinese sumi ink, octopus pigment for the seppia of Mediterranean shellfish ink. The color refers to fresh black ink on white paper: a saturated, slightly cool near-black with the matte finish of dried pigment in a binder. Cooler than coal, deeper than soot.
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.