Homespun Shakudō
Homespun Shakudō (#1A0838) 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 (263°, 75%, 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 compound home + past-participle spun — sharing root with spin. As a color modifier, homespun implies a neutral-and-cottage-industry-and-traditional quality, the neutral color of Welsh-and-Scottish-Highland hand-spun-and-hand-woven cottage-industry-and-traditional-craft textile-finish. Sits at the neutral-and-traditional end of the grid, parallel to folksy and homey in usage.
Japanese 赤銅, red-copper — the Edo-period Japanese black-bronze alloy (96% copper / 4% gold) chemically-patinated to a deep-blue-black surface, used in katana-tsuba and fittings. Shakudō color refers to an Edo-period katana-tsuba in shakudō-ji finish: a dark cool-gray with the metallic finish of rokushō-patinated gold-copper alloy on hand-engraved Japanese sword-guard.
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.