Plush Boleite
Plush Boleite (#21306F) is a deep blue 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 (228°, 54%, 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
From the French peluche, long-haired fabric — borrowed into English in the seventeenth century for the deep-pile velvet imitation that became Victorian upholstery. As a color modifier, plush implies the optical depth that comes from a thick pile absorbing light: plush burgundy, plush emerald. Sits in the dark-and-saturated quadrant near velvet and deep.
A rare lead-copper-silver chloride mineral — mined principally at the Boleo deposits of Baja California (the source of its name). Highly fragile and rarely cut as a gem. The color refers to a fresh boleite specimen: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the metallic-gray-glossy finish of crystallized chloride mineral.
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.