Vaulted Fiddlehead
Vaulted Fiddlehead (#16561D) is a deep green with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (127°, 59%, 21%) 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 violet. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old French voulte, vault via Latin volūta (rolled) — past-participle of vault. As a color modifier, vaulted implies the deep-and-architectural-and-Gothic quality of Salisbury-Cathedral-and-Chartres-Cathedral nave-vault overhead-stone-arched ceiling. Sits at the deep-and-architectural end of the grid, parallel to cavernous with cathedral-vault register.
The tightly coiled emerging frond of any fern — particularly the edible fiddleheads of Matteuccia struthiopteris (ostrich fern), eaten as a foraged spring delicacy in New England. Fiddlehead color refers to a fresh-emerged fern fiddlehead: a saturated, slightly cool yellow-green with the satin finish of curled new growth.
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.