Bucolic Ardoise
Bucolic Ardoise (#21042B) is a deep violet 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 (285°, 83%, 9%) places it in the highly saturated band at a dark lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary green. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Greek boukolikós, of-cattle-herding — adjectival suffix -ic. As a color modifier, bucolic implies a neutral-and-rural-and-pastoral quality, the neutral color of Constable-Stour-Valley-painting and Beethoven-Pastoral idyllic-rural-pastoral mood-evoking color treatment. Sits at the neutral-and-traditional end of the grid, parallel to pastoral and idyllic in usage.
French ardoise, slate — particularly the deep-blue-gray ardoise d'Anjou slate quarried from the Maine-et-Loire and Mayenne slate-belt for Loire-Valley château-roofs. Ardoise color refers to a Château de Chambord ardoise d'Anjou roof-tile face in raking sun: a dark blue-gray with the matte finish of metamorphic Carboniferous slate-shale on a hand-quarried 16th-century roofing tile.
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.