Peaceful Mirth Denim
Peaceful Mirth Denim (#2A5B85) is a deep azure 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 (208°, 52%, 34%) 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 orange. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin pāx, peace — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, peaceful implies a clear-and-restful-and-calm quality where the hue carries the visual register of Quaker-meeting-house still-and-meditative interior atmosphere. Sits at the crisp-and-calm end of the grid, parallel to serene and placid in usage.
Old English myrgth, joy-or-pleasure. As a color modifier, mirth implies a hearty-and-laughing-and-festive quality, the visual register of Twelfth-Night-and-Mardi-Gras-mirth hand-hearty-and-laughing-and-festive Twelfth-Night-and-Mardi-Gras-and-Saturnalia mirthed-and-hearty-and-laughing-and-festive surfaces under Twelfth-Night-and-Mardi-Gras-and-Saturnalia banquet-hall-and-festival-square candlelit-revelry-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to glee and merry in usage.
The diagonal-twill cotton fabric originally woven in Nîmes, France — serge de Nîmes, contracted to denim — and dyed with indigo since at least the eighteenth century. The color refers to a worn but un-faded pair of raw denim jeans: a saturated, slightly muted blue with the matte finish of cotton fiber that has absorbed dye through generations of weft and warp. Cooler than royal, warmer than navy.
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.