Basic Cuttlefish
Basic Cuttlefish (#170330) 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 (267°, 88%, 10%) 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
Greek básis, base / step — adjectival suffix -ic. As a color modifier, basic implies a neutral-and-fundamental-and-uncomplicated quality where the hue carries the visual register of Bauhaus-and-Mondrian-De-Stijl fundamental-and-base-color uncomplicated-essential-element. Sits at the neutral-and-foundational end of the grid, parallel to fundamental and foundational in usage.
Mediterranean Sepia officinalis — a Sepiidae cephalopod whose ink-sac secretion (Sepia) was the principal cinnamon-brown-to-black ink of Western European calligraphy and chiaroscuro drawing from antiquity to the 19th century. Cuttlefish color refers to a freshly extracted Sepia officinalis ink-sac contents in a glass cup: a saturated, slightly cool deep black with the matte finish of melanin-protein cephalopod ink suspended in water.
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.