Cloaked Oxford
Cloaked Oxford (#19348B) is a deep blue 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 (226°, 70%, 32%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old French cloque, bell-cloak — past-participle of cloak. As a color modifier, cloaked implies a deep-fabric-shrouded quality where the hue is muffled by an enveloping textile-darkness. Sits at the deep-and-fabric end of the grid, parallel to mantled and hooded in usage.
The athletic blue of the University of Oxford — adopted alongside Cambridge's lighter blue in the 1820s, when the two universities first began racing crews against each other on the Thames. The color refers to an Oxford-blue rowing jersey: a saturated, slightly muted deep blue with the matte finish of melton wool. Deeper than navy, cooler than royal, with the rivalrous heraldic weight of a color paired with its institutional opposite.
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.