Lush Spruce
Lush Spruce (#19751D) is a deep green 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 (123°, 65%, 28%) 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 violet. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Middle English lush, possibly from lascious, lascivious — a word that drifted from sensual ripeness toward visual abundance. Used as a color word since the eighteenth century for the saturated greens of well-watered foliage and the deep saturated jewel tones of velvet upholstery. Used across the deep and bold buckets where the hue is simultaneously dark and vivid.
The genus Picea, the spruces of the boreal and montane forests — Sitka, Norway, blue, white, black — the conifer that frames timberline across the northern hemisphere. The color refers to fresh spruce needles: a deep, slightly blue-shifted green with the matte finish of resin-coated foliage. Cooler than fern, warmer than teal, with the resinous cold-air association of a high-altitude or high-latitude evergreen.
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.