Sepulchral Heliotrope
Sepulchral Heliotrope (#272573) 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 (242°, 51%, 30%) 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
Latin sepulcrālis, of the burial-place — adjectival form of sepulcrum. As a color modifier, sepulchral implies the deep funereal-and-formal darkness of Holy-Sepulchre-and-rock-cut royal-tomb interiors of medieval-and-Renaissance Christendom. Sits at the deep-and-funereal end of the grid, parallel to entombed and funereal in tone, both literary and architectural.
The genus Heliotropium — the cherry pie plant, named in Greek for its supposed habit of tracking the sun (heliotropism). The color refers to a fresh garden heliotrope cluster in late summer: a saturated, slightly red-shifted deep purple-blue with the matte finish of densely packed forget-me-not-style flowers. Cooler than mauve, warmer than indigo, with the perfumed weight of a flower whose vanilla-cherry scent fills a greenhouse.
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.