Color: Cerulean | Country: Switzerland

Cerulean is a color that has attracted humans for centuries, with its complex mix of blue and green wavelengths and its associations with the sky, the sea, and tranquility.

The word cerulean comes from the Latin caeruleus, meaning dark blue caelum – derived from caelulum, translating as heaven or sky.

Cerulean was discovered through the 1802 invention of Cobalt Blue. In 1805, Swiss chemist Albrecht Höpfner created Cerulean Blue from cobalt stannate by the calcination of tins, salts and silica, with cobalt sulfate, which resulted in a synthetic mineral pigment that is bright, pure semi-transparent pigment.

At first, Cerulean Blue appears strongly on the palette, but as artists mixed it with other colours, it becomes much weaker in strength, and it is this low-tinting strength that is Cerulean’s superpower. On the palette, it gives all sorts of options for creating a range of subtle atmospheric effects – for sky, sea, fashion and beyond.

In the 21st century Cerulean Blue unexpectedly became part of a colour theory. In the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, Cerulean Blue is the shade worn by character Andy, a fashion editorial assistant, who insists that she makes no effort to follow trends. Miranda Priestley, the Editorial Director, proceeds to lecture Andy on the lineage and influence of colour. Using Cerulean Blue as her guide, she explained to her assistant the significance of this one color in fashion and how it worked its way from a high-end “2002 Oscar de la Renta collection of cerulean gowns… then it filtered down through the department stores and trickled on down into some tragic ‘casual corner’ where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin.”

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