Brooding Hortensia
Brooding Hortensia (#550D5A) 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 (296°, 75%, 20%) 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
The adjectival use of brood in the sense of to dwell on — a gerund-as-modifier that describes mood more than reflectance. Used as a color word principally in art criticism since the late nineteenth century: brooding sky, brooding portrait. In the engine's adjective grid, brooding sits in the dark-and-quiet end where the hue is present but reads as withholding rather than presenting itself.
French and Italian for hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) — particularly the deep-violet macrophylla cultivars whose color depends on aluminum availability and soil pH. Hortensia color refers to a fully bloomed Hydrangea macrophylla mophead in acidic Breton soil: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the velvet finish of dense aluminum-anthocyanin-bonded sepal-flowers. Named after Hortense de Beauharnais, stepdaughter of Napoleon and Queen of Holland.
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.