colors
Back to gallery

Shadowy Wend Cobalt

#233c83
Notes

Shadowy Wend Cobalt (#233C83) is a deep azure with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (224°, 58%, 33%) 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.

HEX
#233c83
RGB
rgb(35, 60, 131)
HSL
hsl(224, 58%, 33%)
HWB
hwb(224 14% 49%)
OKLCH
oklch(38.0% 0.123 266.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.1594 0.2328 0.4958)
HSV
hsv(224, 73%, 51%)
LAB
lab(27.37% 16.51 -42.83)
LCH
lch(27.37% 45.90 291.08)
CMYK
cmyk(73%, 54%, 0%, 49%)

Etymology

Shadowy
adjective

Old English sceaduwig, full of shadow — adjectival form of shadow. As a color modifier, shadowy implies a deep-and-obscured quality where the hue is partially-occluded by intervening shade. Sits at the deep-and-veiled end of the grid, parallel to shaded and cloaked in usage.

Wend
modifier

Old English wendan, to-turn-or-go. As a color modifier, wend implies a winding-and-turning-and-meandered quality, the visual register of pilgrim-path-and-river-wend hand-winding-and-turning-and-meandered pilgrim-path-and-river-and-Roman-road wended-and-winding-and-turning-and-meandered surfaces under pilgrim-path-and-river-and-Roman-road Camino-and-Pennine-Way-and-Kumano hilltop-pilgrim-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to drift and roam in usage.

Cobalt
noun

Element Co, atomic number 27 — German Kobold, goblin, named by miners who found the metal interfered with smelting silver ore. Cobalt blue is the cobalt-aluminate pigment introduced by Louis Jacques Thénard in 1802: a saturated, slightly green-shifted deep blue with the matte finish of mineral pigment in oil. Cooler than ultramarine, warmer than prussian, with the painter's weight of a pigment used by Renoir, Van Gogh, and Cézanne.

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 explore

Harmonies

Accessibility

Color-vision simulation

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.

#233c83
Original
#0c4586
Protanopia
#003c82
Deuteranopia
#004d59
Tritanopia
#3c3c3c
Achromatopsia
WCAG contrast

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.

The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon White
10.27:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
Failon Black
2.05:1

Wide gamut

Display P3 representation

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.

sRGB hex
sRGB hex
##233C83
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.1594 0.2328 0.4958)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.123

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.

Related Colors

Canvas