Austere Anemone
Austere Anemone (#4F2095) 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 (264°, 65%, 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
Latin austērus, harsh / bitter. As a color modifier, austere implies a deep-and-stripped-down formality, the dark plain-textile color of Bauhaus and Cistercian monastic interior aesthetic. Sits at the deep-and-formal end of the grid, parallel to stern and severe in tone.
The genus Anemone — Greek for windflower, the small spring perennial whose papery petals tremble in the slightest breeze. The color refers to a fresh deep-purple Anemone coronaria in March bloom: a saturated, slightly red-shifted deep purple-blue with the satiny finish of a five-petaled cup. Cooler than amethyst, warmer than indigo, with the Mediterranean-garden weight of a flower painted in Persian miniature and Italian fresco alike.
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.