Dimming Chicory
Dimming Chicory (#858EA5) is a true azure with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (223°, 15%, 58%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old English dim — present-participle of dim. As a color modifier, dimming implies a hushed-and-light-reducing-and-quieting quality where the hue carries the visual register of evening-dusk-and-overcast gradually-light-reducing color-amplitude. Sits at the hushed-and-fading end of the grid, parallel to waning and fading in usage.
Cichorium intybus, the European herb whose deep-blue daisy flowers open at dawn and close by midday — and whose roots are roasted as a coffee substitute (café avec chicorée). Chicory color refers to a fresh chicory flower at sunrise: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the matte finish of multi-rayed composite flower.
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.