Affable Negro
Affable Negro (#10091D) is a deep indigo with an earthy character. It leans grounded and natural, the kind of color that plays well with wood, clay, linen, and warm neutrals. Its HSL profile (261°, 53%, 7%) 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 lime. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin affābilis, easy-to-speak-to — adjectival suffix -able. As a color modifier, affable implies a neutral-and-friendly-and-approachable quality where the hue carries the visual register of Edwardian-and-American-Country friendly-and-welcoming-hosting interior-decoration-and-textile coordinated-color tone. Sits at the neutral-and-friendly end of the grid, parallel to amiable and cordial in usage.
Spanish for black — derived from Latin niger, shining black (distinct from ater, dull black). Negro color refers to a Spanish-Habsburg capa of negro de humo (lamp-black) dye: a saturated, slightly cool deep black with the matte finish of multi-bath carbon-and-iron-mordant dye on woven Castilian wool. The Spanish color tradition distinguishes negro azabache (jet-black) from negro carbón (charcoal-black).
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.