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Heavy Chive Tanzanite

#5c1b54
Notes

Heavy Chive Tanzanite (#5C1B54) 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°, 55%, 23%) 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.

HEX
#5c1b54
RGB
rgb(92, 27, 84)
HSL
hsl(307, 55%, 23%)
HWB
hwb(307 11% 64%)
OKLCH
oklch(34.9% 0.119 333.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3318 0.1239 0.3196)
HSV
hsv(307, 71%, 36%)
LAB
lab(22.65% 36.87 -19.71)
LCH
lch(22.65% 41.80 331.88)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 71%, 9%, 64%)

Etymology

Heavy
adjective

Old English hefig, weighty — cognate with heave. Used as a color modifier since at least the seventeenth century to indicate weight in saturation as much as value: heavy with pigment, heavy-bodied. In the engine's adjective grid, heavy sits alongside deep and plush in the dark-and-saturated quadrant. Closer to a fabric description than a pure value word.

Chive
modifier

Latin cepa, small-onion-grass-herb. As a color modifier, chive implies a slim-grass-onion-and-spring-fresh quality, the visual register of English-cottage-garden-and-French-bistro-chive hand-slim-grass-onion-and-spring-fresh English-cottage-garden-and-French-bistro-chive-and-fines-herbes chive-and-slim-grass-onion surfaces under English-cottage-garden-and-French-bistro-chive-and-fines-herbes Sussex-cottage-and-Lyon-bouchon spring-onion-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to dill and chervil in usage.

Tanzanite
noun

A blue-violet variety of zoisite — discovered in 1967 in a single small area of northern Tanzania near Mount Kilimanjaro and marketed by Tiffany & Co. shortly after. The color refers to a faceted tanzanite cut to maximize its strong pleochroism: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted deep blue-purple with the gem's signature internal life. Cooler than amethyst, warmer than iolite, with the gem-trade specificity of a stone that occurs in exactly one place on Earth.

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 explore

Harmonies

Accessibility

Color-vision simulation

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.

#5c1b54
Original
#193056
Protanopia
#2f3952
Deuteranopia
#602135
Tritanopia
#2d2d2d
Achromatopsia
WCAG contrast

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.

The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon White
12.07:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
Failon Black
1.74:1

Wide gamut

Display P3 representation

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.

sRGB hex
sRGB hex
##5C1B54
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3318 0.1239 0.3196)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.119

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.

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