Ebon Aubergine
Ebon Aubergine (#551A4E) is a deep violet 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 (307°, 53%, 22%) 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
A poetic shortening of ebony — used principally in nineteenth-century verse and Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven — ebon bird). As a color modifier, ebon is a literary register for deep black with slight warmth, distinct from the cooler inky and the harder jet. Carries the same weight as the wood it borrows from.
The French and British name for the eggplant — borrowed from the Catalan albergínia and ultimately from the Sanskrit vātiṅgaṇa. Aubergine as a color name carries with it the slightly more aristocratic register of the European-language version of the word. The color refers to the same fruit as eggplant but shifted slightly redder in popular usage: a saturated, slightly red-shifted very deep purple with the polished finish of waxy fruit. Cooler than wine, warmer than indigo.
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.