Cimmerian Brindisi
Cimmerian Brindisi (#502E83) 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 (264°, 48%, 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 the Cimmerians of Homer's Odyssey — a legendary people who dwelled at the western edge of the world in perpetual darkness. As a color modifier, cimmerian implies a literary-poetic register for absolute darkness without sunlight. Sits at the deepest end of the grid, parallel to Stygian with classical literary connotations.
Italian Adriatic port city — once the Roman Brundisium, terminus of the Via Appia, and a major Phoenician-and-Roman purpura shellfish-dye production center. Brindisi color refers to a Brindisi-dyed Roman toga praetexta with its purple-edged border: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the matte finish of multi-bath murex-shellfish dye on multi-rolled woolen toga fabric.
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.