Brimming Mace Ultramarine
Brimming Mace Ultramarine (#3F74E2) is a true azure with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (220°, 74%, 57%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old English brymme, brim / edge — present-participle of brim. As a color modifier, brimming implies a saturated-and-overflowing quality where the hue spills past the edge of its visual container with rich pigmentation. Sits at the bold-and-saturated end of the grid, parallel to replete and abundant.
Latin macir, outer-aril-of-nutmeg. As a color modifier, mace implies a Banda-Islands-aril-and-orange-red-spice quality, the visual register of Banda-Islands-and-Spice-Islands-mace hand-Banda-Islands-aril-and-orange-red-spice Banda-Islands-and-Spice-Islands-mace-and-Maluku-aril mace-and-Banda-Islands-aril surfaces under Banda-Islands-and-Spice-Islands-mace-and-Maluku-aril Banda-Islands-and-Run-and-Maluku Spice-Islands-aril-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to nutmeg and clove in usage.
The pigment ground from lapis lazuli — the Afghan mineral imported through Venice in the late Middle Ages, more expensive by weight than gold during the Renaissance. The color refers to a freshly mixed ultramarine pigment in linseed oil: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted deep blue with the matte finish of micron-ground rock. Deeper than cobalt, cooler than royal, with the art-historical weight of the blue Vermeer reserved for Mary's robe.
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.