Shadowy Samarkand
Shadowy Samarkand (#171551) 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 (242°, 59%, 20%) 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
Old English sceaduwig, full of shadow — adjectival form of shadow. As a color modifier, shadowy implies a deep-and-obscured quality where the hue is partially-occluded by intervening shade. Sits at the deep-and-veiled end of the grid, parallel to shaded and cloaked in usage.
Central Asian Silk Road city in Uzbekistan — capital of Tamerlane's Timurid empire and home of the Registan madrasa complex with its iconic deep-blue tilework. Samarkand color refers to the deep-blue muqarnas vault of the Registan's Tilya-Kori madrasa: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the glossy finish of cobalt-and-lazurite-glazed kashin tiles. Slightly warmer than Bukhara.
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.