Vernacular Lava
Vernacular Lava (#130220) is a deep indigo 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 (274°, 88%, 7%) 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 lime. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin vernāculus, of-the-household-slave / native — adjectival suffix -ar. As a color modifier, vernacular implies a neutral-and-local-and-traditional quality, the neutral color of Vernacular-Architecture regional-and-traditional hand-built-and-local-tradition stone-and-brick-and-thatch surface. Sits at the neutral-and-traditional end of the grid, parallel to regional and folksy in usage.
Italian for fall / flow via Latin lavare (to wash) — particularly the deep-glossy-black pahoehoe basaltic lava-flow of Hawaiian and Italian-Etna volcanic eruptions. Lava color refers to a freshly cooled pahoehoe basaltic lava-flow surface on the Big Island of Hawaii: a saturated, slightly cool deep black with the glassy finish of cooling-rate-quenched basaltic glass over crystallized iron-magnesium silicate.
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.