Midnight blue

Midnight blue is a dark shade of blue named for its resemblance to the identifiably blue color of a moonlit night sky on or near the night of a full moon. Midnight blue is the color of a vat full of Indigo dye; therefore, midnight blue may also be considered a dark shade of indigo. Midnight blue is identifiably blue to the eye in sun-light or full-spectrum light, but can appear black under certain more limited spectrums sometimes found in artificial lighting (especially early 20th century incandescent). As a consequence, it is often colloquially confused with black-blue, which is a black with a blue undertone, or deep navy, which is a blue so dark it is nearly black.

There are two major shades of midnight blue—the X11 color and the Crayola color. This color was originally called midnight. The first recorded use of midnight as a color name in English was in 1915.^[1]

Midnight blue

Midnight Blue
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#191970
RGBB	(r, g, b)	(25, 25, 112)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(240°, 78%, 44%)
Source		X11
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

At right is displayed the color midnight blue.

This is the X11 web color midnight blue.

Variations of midnight blue

Dark midnight blue

Midnight Blue (Crayola)
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#003366
RGBB	(r, g, b)	(0, 51, 102)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(210°, 100%, 40%)
Source		Crayola
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

At right is displayed the dark shade of midnight blue that is called midnight blue in Crayola crayons.

Midnight blue has been an official Crayola color since 1958; before that, since having been formulated by Crayola in 1949, it was called Prussian blue.

Midnight blue in culture

Comic books

• There is a comic-book character called Midnight Blue.^[2]

Fashion

• Midnight blue remains the only acceptable alternative to black as a color for dinner jackets. Due to the deepness of the color, midnight blue formal clothes are almost indistinguishable from black. This has been the case since the 1930s, when the Duke of Windsor popularized the color in suits and tuxedos.

Military

• US Air Force Midnight Blue is the color used on ABU (Air Battle Uniform) nametapes and rank insignia. A thread color from the manufactures American and Efird that is used by a major supplier of military nametapes is color number 51621. Madeira embroidery thread (100% Viscose) color 1244 is also a very dark midnight (almost black) blue thread.
• The Special Reconnaissance Regiment uses Midnight Blue on its stable belts, as a flat colour all round.

Sports

• The Buffalo Sabres have used midnight blue as an official team color ever since they discarded black & red as their team colors and returned to their blue & gold color scheme just before the start of the 2006-07 NHL season.
• The Edmonton Oilers use midnight blue as an official team color, alongside copper.
• The Dallas Mavericks have used midnight blue as one of their official team colors since the 2001-02 NBA season. Their former primary road uniforms were colored midnight blue with "DALLAS" spelled out in silver on the front. Currently, the Mavericks use midnight blue as their secondary color.
• The Golden State Warriors have used midnight blue as one of their official team colors since the 1997-98 NBA season.
• The Toledo Rockets use midnight blue and gold as their official team colors.^[3]
• The Deccan Chargers use midnight blue and silver as their official team colors.
• Fulham F.C. used a midnight blue third kit in 2009/10 season.
• Soo Bahk Do Moo Duk Kwan, a type of Martial arts, uses midnight blue as an expert ranking.

Web site design

• As it is a web-safe color, Midnight blue is an extremely popular color choice, showing up on various websites, including the latest version of Google's blog service, Blogger.

See also

• List of colors

References