Ebon Periwinkle
Ebon Periwinkle (#3C337F) 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 (247°, 43%, 35%) 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.
Etymology
A poetic shortening of ebony — used principally in nineteenth-century verse and Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven — ebon bird). As a color modifier, ebon is a literary register for deep black with slight warmth, distinct from the cooler inky and the harder jet. Carries the same weight as the wood it borrows from.
Vinca minor, the trailing groundcover of European woodland whose pale blue-violet flowers gave English the color name in the eighteenth century. Distinct from Catharanthus roseus (Madagascar periwinkle, the source of vincristine for chemotherapy). The color refers to the corolla of a fresh Vinca flower: a soft, slightly violet-shifted pale blue with the matte finish of five-petaled bloom. Lighter than bluebell, cooler than lavender.
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.