Domestic Tetsu
Domestic Tetsu (#090B40) 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 (238°, 75%, 14%) places it in the balanced band at a dark lightness. It works well as a headline, icon, or deep background in an otherwise light layout, pairing cleanly with cream, bone, and warm neutrals. 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 domesticus, of-the-house — derived from domus (house). As a color modifier, domestic implies a neutral-and-household-and-everyday quality, the neutral color of Vermeer-and-Dutch-Genre-painting household-and-everyday interior-and-textile-and-table-still-life finish, often featuring whitewashed walls and earthen-tiled floors. Sits at the neutral-and-traditional end of the grid, parallel to homey and cottage in usage.
Japanese 鉄, iron — adopted into Japanese color terminology as the deep iron-gray of tetsubin cast-iron tea-kettles and tatara-furnace pig-iron. Tetsu color refers to a freshly tetsubin-cast iron tea-kettle exterior in raking light: a dark cool-gray with the matte finish of cast-iron-and-iron-tannin patina on hand-cast Nambu-tekki iron-ware.
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.