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Senatorial Starlight

#3a3b9d
Notes

Senatorial Starlight (#3A3B9D) is a true 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 (239°, 46%, 42%) places it in the balanced band at a mid lightness. It works across type, buttons, and borders, saturated enough to feel deliberate but balanced enough to not fight the rest of the palette. 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.

HEX
#3a3b9d
RGB
rgb(58, 59, 157)
HSL
hsl(239, 46%, 42%)
HWB
hwb(239 23% 38%)
OKLCH
oklch(41.4% 0.155 276.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.2282 0.2312 0.5934)
HSV
hsv(239, 63%, 62%)
LAB
lab(30.55% 30.53 -53.60)
LCH
lch(30.55% 61.69 299.66)
CMYK
cmyk(63%, 62%, 0%, 38%)

Etymology

Senatorial
adjective

Latin senātōrius, of the senator — adjectival suffix. As a color modifier, senatorial implies a saturated-and-aristocratic-and-Roman-Republic quality, the deep-rich color of Roman-Senate toga praetexta purple-bordered ceremonial-citizen-class livery. Sits at the bold-and-aristocratic end of the grid, parallel to patrician and imperial.

Starlight
noun

The integrated visible spectrum of the Milky Way's faint stars — about 500 times dimmer than full moonlight and richly blue-violet at high galactic-latitude viewing angles where dust extinction is minimized. Starlight color refers to the deep-blue night-sky background between the brightest stars on a moonless dark-site night: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the optical complexity of integrated multi-stellar Rayleigh-scattered atmospheric light.

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 explore

Harmonies

Accessibility

Color-vision simulation

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.

#3a3b9d
Original
#004ca0
Protanopia
#00449b
Deuteranopia
#005366
Tritanopia
#424242
Achromatopsia
WCAG contrast

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.

The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon White
9.16:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
Failon Black
2.29:1

Wide gamut

Display P3 representation

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.

sRGB hex
sRGB hex
##3A3B9D
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.2282 0.2312 0.5934)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.155

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.

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