Smooth Woad
Smooth Woad (#0981B8) is a true cyan 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 (199°, 91%, 38%) 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
Old English smōþ, level, polished — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as continuous without texture or break. Smooth tan, smooth gray: moderate saturation combined with optical evenness. Sits in the crisp-bucket alongside even.
Isatis tinctoria, the European blue-dye plant whose leaves yield indigo-equivalent indigotin. Used by Pictish warriors as body paint and the dominant pre-industrial European blue dye until East Indian indigo displaced it in the seventeenth century. The color refers to a freshly woad-dyed wool: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the matte finish of plant-and-mordant dye.
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.