Useful Reseda
Useful Reseda (#3B712B) is a deep green 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 (106°, 45%, 31%) 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 violet. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin ūsus, use — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, useful implies a clear-and-purpose-serving quality where the hue carries the visual register of helpful-and-supporting design-element. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to practical and serviceable in usage.
Reseda luteola, dyer's weed — a Mediterranean herb cultivated for the yellow dye extracted from its leaves and stalks since Roman times. Reseda as a color refers to a desaturated yellow-green: the soft, slightly muted shade of dried mignonette stems before extraction, or the pale ground of a Regency-era wallpaper. Cooler than sage, warmer than celadon, with the historical weight of an industrial-textile pigment.
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.