Murky Java
Murky Java (#4B2290) 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 (262°, 62%, 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
From Old Norse myrkr, darkness — sharing root with mirkwood. Murky implies low value combined with reduced clarity — the deep brown-greens of pond water, the dim interior of a smoke-blackened bar. Sits at the deep-and-dirtied end of the grid, where the color is both dark and slightly clouded.
Indonesian island, the colonial-era Dutch source of Indigofera tinctoria cultivation supplementing the Indian supply, and the home of batik tulis indigo wax-resist dyeing. Java color refers to a Yogyakarta-made batik tulis sarong: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the matte finish of multi-bath fermentation indigo on hand-waxed cotton. Slightly warmer than Bengali indigo from the Indian mainland.
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.