Soaked Hokkaido
Soaked Hokkaido (#4B1B96) is a true indigo with a jewel character. It carries the deep, saturated richness of a gemstone. Authoritative and slightly formal, it works well for type and heavy UI elements. Its HSL profile (263°, 69%, 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 lime. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old English sūcian, to suck up liquid — past-participle of soak. As a color modifier, soaked implies a deep-saturation quality where the hue has reached fiber-saturation in dyed textile. Sits at the deep-and-saturated end of the grid, parallel to drenched and steeped in usage.
Japan's northernmost island, home to the Furano lavender fields cultivated since 1948 by Tomita Farm — a Japanese imitation of Provençal lavender agriculture, now a national tourist landmark. Hokkaido color refers to a Furano lavender field at peak bloom: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the matte finish of Lavandula angustifolia essential-oil-rich bracts. Slightly cooler than Provençal lavanda.
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.
This color is chromatic enough that authoring it as P3 native (instead of clamping to sRGB) gives a perceptibly more saturated render on wide-gamut displays — modern Macs, iPhones, iPads, and most recent OLED laptops.