Smothering Tarbuttite
Smothering Tarbuttite (#313175) 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 (240°, 41%, 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 yellow. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old English smorian, to suffocate — present-participle of smother. As a color modifier, smothering implies a deep-and-overwhelming-and-pressing quality where the hue is dominated by an enveloping darkness. Sits at the deep-and-overwhelming end of the grid, parallel to suffocating with kinetic register.
Rare zinc-phosphate mineral first described from the Broken Hill lead-zinc deposits of Zambia in 1907, also found at Reaphook Hill in South Australia. Tarbuttite color refers to a deep-violet Broken Hill tarbuttite crystal cluster: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the glassy finish of zinc-phosphate mineral. Named for Percy Coventry Tarbutt, an early-20th-century mining-company director.
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.