Bleak Aizome
Bleak Aizome (#203468) is a deep azure with an earthy character. It leans grounded and natural, the kind of color that plays well with wood, clay, linen, and warm neutrals. Its HSL profile (223°, 53%, 27%) 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 Norse bleikr, pale — sharing root with English bleach. As a color modifier, bleak implies a deep-and-cold-and-comfortless quality, the dark gray-pale of Yorkshire-Moors and Hebrides late-winter atmospheric-light. Sits at the deep-and-cool end of the grid, parallel to grim and bitter in atmospheric register.
The Japanese traditional indigo-dyeing technique — aizome — using Persicaria tinctoria (Japanese indigo) and natural fermentation in clay vats. The dyer is called aishi (indigo master), trained over decades. The color refers to a freshly aizome-dyed cotton: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the matte finish of multi-bath natural-indigo dye.
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.
Wide gamut
The CSS Color 4 wide-gamut form of this color. Both swatches render the same color on every display — the P3 form only diverges from sRGB when a designer pushes channels outside sRGB's reach.
Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.