Stygian Wisteria
Stygian Wisteria (#171243) is a deep blue 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 (246°, 58%, 17%) 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 yellow. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
From the Greek Styx, the river of the underworld — used as an adjective in English since the seventeenth century to mean infernally dark. Stygian is the literary register for absolute darkness, deeper than inky and warmer than vantablack. Almost always reaches for poetic weight rather than precise reflectance.
The genus Wisteria, the climbing legume vines of East Asia — W. sinensis (Chinese) and W. floribunda (Japanese) — whose pendulous racemes of pale blue-violet flowers drape ten meters of pergola in late spring. The color refers to a fresh wisteria flower cluster: a soft, slightly violet-shifted pale blue with the matte finish of pea-family florets. Lighter than lilac, cooler than periwinkle, with the architectural weight of a vine that ages into structure.
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.