Ancient Nocturne
Ancient Nocturne (#706D85) is a true blue 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 (248°, 10%, 47%) places it in the muted band at a mid lightness. It works across type, buttons, and borders, saturated enough to feel deliberate but balanced enough to not fight the rest of the palette. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary yellow. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin anteānus, of-the-old-time — sharing root with ante (before). As a color modifier, ancient implies a hushed-and-deep-historical quality where the hue carries the visual register of Pompeii-and-Roman archeological-period faded-and-mineral-pigment color. Sits at the hushed-and-aged end of the grid, parallel to olden and antique in usage.
French nocturne, night-piece — adopted into music by John Field (Irish, 1812) and Frédéric Chopin (Polish, 1827–46) for piano character pieces evoking nighttime, and into painting by James McNeill Whistler for a series of deep-blue-violet Thames-river twilights. Nocturne color refers to a Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold foreground tonality: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the soft finish of thinned oil over warm gesso.
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 sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.