Smoky Genji
Smoky Genji (#482B90) is a true 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 (257°, 54%, 37%) 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 lime. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
An adjectival form of smoke, used as a color word since at least the fourteenth century. Smoky implies a slightly muted, slightly hazed quality — as if the color were seen through a layer of suspended particulate. Used across both deep and neutral buckets: a smoky black has slightly less density than pure black; a smoky gray has slightly less coolness than pure gray.
The eponymous nobleman of The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari, 1010 CE) by Murasaki Shikibu, whose silk-on-silk court robes were dyed in graduated layers of murasaki and aizome. Genji color refers to a layered Heian-period court robe in the kasane no irome tradition: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the silk luster of multi-layer kasane dyeing.
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.