Velvet Erodium
Velvet Erodium (#70116B) 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 (303°, 74%, 25%) 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 short-pile woven fabric — silk, cotton, or rayon — whose densely packed vertical fibers absorb almost all incident light, producing a deeper black than the dye alone could give. The color refers to a black silk velvet: a deep, slightly muted black with the velvet's signature optical depth and the directional shading that distinguishes it from any flat fabric. Cooler than sable, deeper than ink.
Eurasian storksbill (Erodium cicutarium) — a Geraniaceae annual with deep-violet five-petaled cup-flowers and the long-pointed seed-pod shaped like a stork's bill. Erodium color refers to a fully bloomed Erodium cicutarium cup-flower: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the velvet finish of fresh small five-petaled cup-corollas. The genus name comes from the Greek erōdios (heron), after the seed-pod shape.
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.