Saturnine Murasakiawa
Saturnine Murasakiawa (#581497) is a deep 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 (271°, 77%, 34%) places it in the highly saturated band at a dark lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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 Sāturnīnus, of Saturn — referring to the gloomy temperament associated with the planet Saturn in classical-and-Renaissance astrology. As a color modifier, saturnine implies a deep-and-cool-and-gloomy quality, the dark cool-gray of Hellebore-and-Lead alchemical-melancholic associations. Sits at the deep-and-cool end of the grid, parallel to sullen and gloomy.
Japanese pale-purple shade (薄紫, usu-murasaki in modern usage) — historically a kasane layer color combining a thin gromwell-dyed silk over a pale silk substrate. Murasakiawa color refers to a Heian-period second-rank kasane sleeve layer: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the silk luster of single-bath gromwell-root dye on layered silk crepe. Slightly cooler than full murasaki.
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.
This color is chromatic enough that authoring it as P3 native (instead of clamping to sRGB) gives a perceptibly more saturated render on wide-gamut displays — modern Macs, iPhones, iPads, and most recent OLED laptops.