# Brand colors — Branching Skies

Our palette was extracted from a painted Cathedral master and split into three tiers by role. Use the primary palette for any placement that needs to read as Branching Skies; the secondary palette for accents and supporting depth; the atmospheric palette for editorial design moments where you need additional tonal range.

All hex values match the live `colors.css` design tokens our application ships against.

## Primary palette

The three colors that carry the brand. If a placement only allows three colors, use these.

| Color name  | Hex       | Role                                                                      |
| ----------- | --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Ink deep    | `#0a0d18` | Primary dark background. Used as the page canvas in almost every surface. |
| Cream paper | `#f5ecda` | Primary text color on dark backgrounds. Wordmarks. Body copy.             |
| Gold warm   | `#cbb491` | Primary accent. Borders, eyebrow labels, key callouts, highlight states.  |

## Secondary palette

Supporting colors that appear in specific roles. Use sparingly.

| Color name    | Hex       | Role                                                            |
| ------------- | --------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Amber         | `#c08544` | CTA color. Inline links. Candle-glow accents.                   |
| Candle flame  | `#d1a88c` | Warm hotspot color in cathedral imagery. Editorial highlight.   |
| Twilight blue | `#3a4e7a` | Atmospheric depth in cathedral imagery. Quiet editorial accent. |
| Aurora teal   | `#6cd0c8` | Rare accent. Used in subscribe-success microcopy on landing.    |

## Atmospheric palette

Additional tonal range for editorial design. Use only when the primary and secondary palettes don't carry enough range for a given placement.

| Color name  | Hex       | Role                                              |
| ----------- | --------- | ------------------------------------------------- |
| Ink mid     | `#181d2b` | Elevated dark surface. Cards on dark backgrounds. |
| Stone light | `#d6c8a8` | Neutral mid-tone. Muted text variants.            |
| Shadow deep | `#1a1d2c` | Deep shadow for layered cathedral compositions.   |
| Shadow cool | `#3a3539` | Cool shadow tone for atmospheric depth.           |
| Sunset rose | `#60514c` | Muted warm tone for cathedral interior shadows.   |

## Provenance

These colors were extracted via `scripts/landing-page/extract-colors.py` from the painted Cathedral master image our brand identity is built around. The script samples dominant tones from the painted source and rounds them into the tier structure above. Re-extraction would produce the same tiers; the palette is locked.