Subterranean Samarkand
Subterranean Samarkand (#3C267B) is a deep indigo 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 (256°, 53%, 32%) 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 lime. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin sub-terraneus, under-ground. As a color modifier, subterranean implies the cool deep darkness of cave-and-tunnel interiors where ambient daylight has been completely eliminated. Sits at the deep-and-cool end of the grid, where the hue reads as cellar-dwelling rather than night-sky deep.
Central Asian Silk Road city in Uzbekistan — capital of Tamerlane's Timurid empire and home of the Registan madrasa complex with its iconic deep-blue tilework. Samarkand color refers to the deep-blue muqarnas vault of the Registan's Tilya-Kori madrasa: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the glossy finish of cobalt-and-lazurite-glazed kashin tiles. Slightly warmer than Bukhara.
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.