Shaker Vortex
Shaker Vortex (#180938) 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 (259°, 72%, 13%) 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 lime. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
English Shaker, United-Society-of-Believers-in-Christ's-Second-Appearing — adjectival usage of Shaker. As a color modifier, shaker implies a neutral-and-plain-and-stripped-down quality, the neutral color of Shaker-furniture-and-craft anti-ornamental-and-functional hand-built-and-precise-craft surface-finish. Sits at the neutral-and-stripped-down end of the grid, parallel to quakerly and plain in usage.
Latin vortex, whirl — the deep-cool-gray rotating-fluid structure of tornado, waterspout, and whirlpool phenomena. Vortex color refers to a Niagara-Falls whirlpool downstream of the Horseshoe Falls: a dark cool-gray with the optical complexity of high-velocity downstream-current-mixed Niagara-River water against the Niagara Gorge shale cliff-face.
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.