Laconic Cathedral
Laconic Cathedral (#160837) 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 (258°, 75%, 12%) 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
Greek Lakonikós, of-Lacedaemon — adjectival suffix -ic, referring to the Spartan-Lacedaemonian terse-and-restrained speech-style. As a color modifier, laconic implies a neutral-and-terse-and-unembellished quality, the neutral color of Spartan-and-Stoic-school unembellished-and-terse-formal color-decision. Sits at the neutral-and-quiet end of the grid, parallel to taciturn and reticent in usage.
The interior color of an aging Gothic cathedral — limestone darkened by centuries of candle smoke, incense, and city soot. The color refers to the upper walls of Notre-Dame de Paris before the 2019 fire and restoration: a soft, slightly muted dark gray with the matte finish of weathered porous stone. Cooler than smoke, warmer than slate, with the architectural weight of a building type whose interiors are read primarily in shadow.
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.