Kamakura era
Vermillion, Black, Gold— 朱・黒・金
The ceremonial triad of temple lacquerware — vermillion, lacquer black, gold leaf.
#141414
neutral · 1 palette
Kuro
黒
Lacquer black
About Kuro
Kuro (黒) is a deep, near-neutral neutral tone. Its hex value is #141414 — that is
RGB 20, 20, 20, or HSL 0°, 0%, 8%.
Lacquer black.
It holds 18.4:1 contrast against white, so Kuro works best for body text, headings, and UI labels. (On white it scores 18.4:1; on black 1.1:1.)
Across Sanzo Wada's 1933 Dictionary of Color Combinations, Kuro appears in 1 combination — most often paired with Shu and Kin.
The story of Kuro
Kuro (黒) is black — but Japanese tradition distinguishes several blacks, and kuro is the everyday one: closer to Indian ink with a slight warmth, less absolute than printer's black. Used for kimono base colour in formal mourning (where it's worn paired with white only), for crests (mon) on white silk, and for the structural lines in calligraphy and ink-wash painting (sumi-e).
Where sumi (墨, ink) is the calligraphy-specific black with sheen and depth, kuro is the broader 'black' of textile and lacquer. Modern usage: luxury packaging, premium menswear, editorial design — kuro reads warmer than Western black, especially when paired with cream rather than pure white.
Palettes with Kuro
Kuro appears in 1 combination from the archive.
From the archive
Support the archive The full catalog, on your disk, as a thank-you.
- All 378 palettes (348 Wada + 30 editorial) in five formats
- Figma design tokens (W3C-spec JSON, drag into any file)
- Tailwind v4 + v3 configs — drop into any project
- CSS custom properties — every plate, one stylesheet
- 378 museum SVG plates — print-ready at any size
- Full JSON — colors, names, eras, moods, dominant hues
See what's inside
Launching soon. The free archive stays free, always.