Macabre Thistle
Macabre Thistle (#33153F) is a deep violet 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 (283°, 50%, 16%) 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 green. 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.
The thistles — Onopordum, Cirsium, Carduus — spiny composite-family perennials whose tufted purple flower heads adorn the Scottish national emblem and uncountable European pasture margins. The color refers to a fresh thistle flower at peak bloom: a soft, slightly red-shifted pale purple with the matte finish of tufted florets. Lighter than heather, warmer than lavender, with the heraldic weight of a flower that defends itself with thorns.
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.