A hue with black added — a darker version of the same colour.
In strict colour-theory usage, a shade is produced by reducing lightness/value while holding hue constant, distinct from a tint (lighter) or a tone (greyer).
In everyday speech 'shade' is often used loosely to mean any colour variant ('what shade of green is that?') — the strict definition specifically means darker.
Navy is a shade of blue.
Knowing the strict meaning helps when reading paint or design terminology precisely, even though everyday usage is looser.
A shade has no unit of its own. It is described by how far lightness has fallen from the parent colour while the hue angle stays put: a lower L* in CIELAB, a lower L in OKLCH or HSL, or a lower Munsell value. In paint the step is made by adding black or a dark complementary pigment.
| Colour | HSL hue | HSL lightness | CIELAB L* | CIELAB chroma |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue #0000ff | 240° | 50% | 32.3 | 133.8 |
| Navy Blue #000080 | 240° | 25% | 13.0 | 80.3 |
| Red #ff0000 | 0° | 50% | 53.2 | 104.6 |
| Maroon #800000 | 0° | 25% | 25.5 | 61.3 |
Maroon is Red with every channel halved: the HSL hue stays at 0° and HSL lightness drops from 50% to 25%. Measured lightness falls further than that suggests, from L* 53.2 to 25.5, and chroma falls with it, from 104.6 to 61.3. Darkening a colour also makes it less colourful, which is why a deep shade can look browner or greyer than the hue it came from.
How this was calculated: Catalogue HEX values converted to HSL and to CIELAB under D65; the shades are the catalogue's own Navy blue and Maroon, not generated ones.
Darkening a yellow or an orange for a hover state, a border or a feature wall.
Dark yellow is olive and dark orange is brown: the shade crosses into a different colour name. If the result still has to read as yellow, raise the chroma or shift the hue towards orange as the lightness comes down.