Sylphine Ruri
Sylphine Ruri (#AFC7E1) is a soft azure with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (211°, 45%, 78%) places it in the balanced band at a light lightness. It works as a background wash, large-area fill, or soft illustration tone. Add a darker ink of the same hue when you need type over it. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary orange. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Greek sýlphē, air-spirit — adjectival suffix -ine, derived from sylph (an air-elemental in alchemical-cosmology). As a color modifier, sylphine implies a pale-and-airy-and-spirit-thin quality, the pale color of Pre-Raphaelite-and-Symbolist-painting air-spirit-and-ethereal-figure soft-light-and-airy iconography. Sits at the pale-and-ethereal end of the grid, parallel to fairylike and elfin in usage.
The Japanese name for lapis lazuli — used since the Heian period for the deep blue of carved Buddhist altar ornament and the imported pigment of Japanese Buddhist painting. Ruri-iro (瑠璃色) names a saturated dark blue distinct from ai-iro. The color refers to a polished Japanese-cut lapis cabochon: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue with the matte finish of fine lapis.
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.