Professor Plum
#393540
Violet-gray plum note, darker and warmer than night
About Professor Plum
Professor Plum is the kind of dark you notice in a room after the lights dim. It's not ink-flat like a true near-black, and it doesn't settle into that soot-cool feel of charcoal. This shade has a smoother, deeper gray base with a faint violet whisper that keeps it from reading as just "more black."
Compared with Jet Black, it's less neutral and more gently tinted, so borders and panel edges feel a bit more intentional than purely grounded. And versus Italian Grape, the violet stays muted and controlled, more gray-forward than grape-skin purple. I like it for dark-mode editorial timelines and audio post project screens where you want dense labels to separate cleanly without the mood turning smoky or overly styled, plus dashboards for studio analytics and log-heavy review pages.
Quirk: on glossy UI surfaces it can pick up a slight lilac edge, so test against your actual whites and keep your divider grays a touch warmer if you see contrast banding.
Code snippets
Copy this color into your project.
Contrast checker
WCAG 2.1 contrast ratios. AA requires 4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large. AAA requires 7:1 / 4.5:1.
On White #ffffff
On Gray 100 #f5f5f5
On Gray 900 #18181b
On Black #000000
Variations
Shades
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Tints
Lighter variations, created by mixing toward white.
Tones
Muted variations, created by reducing saturation.
Hues
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Temperatures
Warm and cool shifts of this color.
Color harmonies
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