Mourning Phoenicia
Mourning Phoenicia (#520F5A) is a deep violet 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 (294°, 71%, 21%) places it in the balanced band at a dark lightness. It works well as a headline, icon, or deep background in an otherwise light layout, pairing cleanly with cream, bone, and warm neutrals. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary green. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old English murnan, to grieve — present-participle of mourn, sharing root with Old Norse morna. As a color modifier, mourning implies the deep-and-funereal-and-formal-and-Victorian-mourning-period black-textile quality, the dark cool-formality of widow's-weeds-and-funeral-procession. Sits at the deep-and-funereal end of the grid, parallel to funereal and sepulchral.
The ancient Levantine coast (modern Lebanon and northern Israel) — the Greek-named Phoinikē (purple-people) civilization whose maritime traders carried Tyrian purple across the Mediterranean from 1500 BCE. Phoenicia color refers to a Phoenician purpura-dyed trade textile excavated from a Sidon tomb: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the matte finish of multi-bath shellfish-dye on hand-loomed Levantine wool.
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.