Macabre Yamaai
Macabre Yamaai (#271C67) is a deep blue 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 (249°, 57%, 26%) 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 yellow. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
French macabre, possibly from Macabre (the medieval Danse Macabre) or Hebrew meqabber (gravedigger). As a color modifier, macabre implies a deep-and-funereal-and-uncanny quality, the dark cool-gray of medieval-and-Victorian memento-mori iconography. Sits at the deep-and-funereal end of the grid, parallel to funereal with uncanny-and-grotesque overtone.
Japanese mountain indigo, Mercurialis leiocarpa — a wild herb used for dyeing in the Heian period (794–1185) before cultivated aizome indigo supplanted it. Yamaai color refers to a freshly yamaai-dyed silk: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the matte finish of mineral-mordanted natural dye. The plant is the only naturally occurring indican-type indigo precursor in Japan.
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.