Sable Wisteria
Sable Wisteria (#5A2460) 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 (294°, 45%, 26%) 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
Martes zibellina, the Eurasian sable — a small mustelid of Siberian taiga whose deep brown-black fur was the most prized mammalian pelt of the Russian and Chinese imperial courts. The color refers to a fresh sable pelt: a deep, slightly warm near-black with the satin finish of densely packed guard hairs. Warmer than ink, glossier than coal, with the courtly weight of a fur reserved for tsars and emperors.
The genus Wisteria, the climbing legume vines of East Asia — W. sinensis (Chinese) and W. floribunda (Japanese) — whose pendulous racemes of pale blue-violet flowers drape ten meters of pergola in late spring. The color refers to a fresh wisteria flower cluster: a soft, slightly violet-shifted pale blue with the matte finish of pea-family florets. Lighter than lilac, cooler than periwinkle, with the architectural weight of a vine that ages into structure.
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.
Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.