Cavernous Heki
Cavernous Heki (#162F6D) is a deep azure 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 (223°, 66%, 26%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
An adjectival form of cavern, used principally for the deep darkness of large enclosed spaces. As a color modifier, cavernous implies the slightly cool deep blacks of a Lascaux-style cave or a basilica crypt — darkness with the optical complexity of a space larger than any single light source can fill. Sits in the deep-and-spatial end of the grid.
Japanese heki (碧) — a classical Sino-Japanese character spanning jade-green and deep-blue in pre-modern color vocabulary. Heki-iro names the saturated blue of polished imperial-grade nephrite. The color refers to a polished Japanese nephrite yu disc: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-green with the satin finish of fine jade.
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.