Caliginous Variscite
Caliginous Variscite (#233908) is a deep lime 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 (87°, 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 indigo. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin cālīginōsus, misty / dark — derived from cālīgō (mist, gloom). As a color modifier, caliginous implies an obscured, dimmed, slightly-cool-shifted quality where the hue is veiled by darkness or atmospheric fog. Sits at the deep-and-veiled end of the grid, between murky and tenebrous in usage.
A hydrated aluminum phosphate mineral — yellow-green to blue-green in color, mined principally in Utah and Australia. Often confused with low-grade turquoise. The color refers to a polished variscite cabochon: a soft, slightly muted yellow-green with the matte finish of opaque mineral. Cooler than prehnite.
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.
This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.