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.
Read more about Midnight Blue: Midnight Blue, Midnight Blue in Culture
Famous quotes containing the words midnight and/or blue:
“Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms,”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It was beginning winter,
An in-between time,
The landscape still partly brown:
The bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind,
Above the blue snow.”
—Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)