Cavernous Marine
Cavernous Marine (#1C3D98) is a true azure 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 (224°, 69%, 35%) places it in the balanced band at a mid lightness. It works across type, buttons, and borders, saturated enough to feel deliberate but balanced enough to not fight the rest of the palette. 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
An adjectival form of cavern, used principally for the deep darkness of large enclosed spaces. As a color modifier, cavernous implies the slightly cool deep blacks of a Lascaux-style cave or a basilica crypt — darkness with the optical complexity of a space larger than any single light source can fill. Sits in the deep-and-spatial end of the grid.
From the Latin marinus, of the sea — borrowed via French as both noun and adjective. Marine blue refers to the deep working blue of merchant-ship paint and naval uniforms before navy took over the term in the twentieth century. The color is a saturated, slightly muted deep blue with the matte finish of a shipyard pigment. Cooler than cobalt, warmer than navy, with the maritime weight of a word shared by every Romance language.
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.