Sunken Acai
Sunken Acai (#4E2B8B) 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 (262°, 53%, 36%) 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
The past participle of sink — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for surfaces that read as receded or enclosed. Sunken implies a slightly cool darkness with the optical quality of a recessed plane: the sunken eye sockets of a sculpture, the depressed channels of an Anglo-Saxon enamel. Sits in the deep-and-cool corner, closer to shadowed than to brooding.
Brazilian Portuguese for Euterpe oleracea — an Amazon-basin palm whose deep-purple-violet drupe was a quilombola and caboclo dietary staple before its 21st-century superfood commercialization. Acai color refers to a freshly pulped Euterpe oleracea drupe: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the matte finish of anthocyanin-rich palm-fruit pulp. The Tupi-derived word entered English via Portuguese in the 1990s.
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.