Beaming Samarkand
Beaming Samarkand (#9F9AF5) is a soft blue with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (243°, 82%, 78%) places it in the highly saturated band at a light lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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
The progressive participle of beam, to emit a directional light — used as a color word since the nineteenth century for hues that read as if focused and projecting. Beaming yellow, beaming pink: the implication is luminance combined with directionality. Sits at the bright-bucket center alongside radiant and glowing.
Central Asian Silk Road city in Uzbekistan — capital of Tamerlane's Timurid empire and home of the Registan madrasa complex with its iconic deep-blue tilework. Samarkand color refers to the deep-blue muqarnas vault of the Registan's Tilya-Kori madrasa: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the glossy finish of cobalt-and-lazurite-glazed kashin tiles. Slightly warmer than Bukhara.
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.