Cerulean
- HEX
- #007BA7
- RGB
- 0 123 167
- HSL
- 196° 100% 33%
- CMYK
- 100 26 0 35
Cerulean or Steel blue?
Greener than steel blue, leaning toward teal.
Language
Cerulean comes from Latin caeruleus, the dark blue of sea and sky, probably from caelum, heaven.
History
Cerulean blue paint is cobalt and tin oxides fired together. A Swiss chemist made it in the late 1700s, but painters only got it in the 1860s, when London colormen such as George Rowney began selling it as 'coeruleum'. It is a cool, slightly greenish blue, now counted among the lightfast pigments. See cobalt-blue-pigment.
Design
Pantone launched its Color of the Year with Cerulean for 2000, to mark the turn of the millennium.
Culture
In The Devil Wears Prada (2006), editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) corrects her assistant: the sweater isn't just blue, it's cerulean. She traces it from designer runways (she credits Oscar de la Renta and Yves Saint Laurent) through copies and department stores to the clearance bin where the assistant found it. Her point: even people who ignore fashion wear colors fashion chose. The film's history is the script's, but it's the best-known lesson on how a trend travels.
Culture
The scene's most quoted line: "It's not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis." Watch it for the timing: a whole supply chain in a minute.
Art
Painters took risks for cerulean. By the 1890s it had a reputation for fading, yet Signac kept it on his palette, and Monet used it heavily. In France it sold as bleu céleste, a trade name also stuck on other blues, even Prussian blue. Today it is considered a stable pigment.
Kin
- Cobalt: Both are cobalt pigments; cerulean adds tin
- Sky blue: Caeruleus was the Romans' word for the sky's blue
- Coral: Another Pantone Color of the Year, 2019's Living Coral
Sources
- Natural Pigments, 'Cerulean blue' (Höpfner; Rowney 1860)
- Pantone, 'Cerulean 15-4020', Color of the Year 2000
- The Devil Wears Prada (film, 2006), screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna
- Etymonline, 'cerulean'
- Ball, Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour (2001)
- Gage, Colour and Culture (1993)
- St Clair, The Secret Lives of Colour (2016)
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.