SumeruDayWarmDeep-ShadowedFar-Seeing

Village Chief's House in Slanting Light

Palette

Click a swatch to copy its HEX; hover for the OKLCH value.

Reconstructed gradient

The gradient distilled from the scene, unrolled left to right by stop; the authored angle is 180° (used by the hero and exports), while gallery cards share a uniform 135° sweep.

0%fbfcfa10%bde1f535%7f4f4460%473248100%efa971

Why it works

Grey is not taken away by the saturation knob, it is claimed by a second hue. Two pictures of the same Aaru Village return the same reading for their brightest handful of pixels (L 1.00, chroma 0.003), and their lightness ceilings barely move — 1.00 against 0.98 — yet the achromatic share is 27.81% against 3.36%, a gap of 8.3 times. Here the sun is warm and the sky is a cold 233°, so every backlit surface that had nowhere to go now reports violet, rose and red instead, taking 43.55% of the frame, and the only grey left is that one cloud at the top left.

Same ceiling, 8.3 times the grey

The published «Aaru's Shut in White Light» is the same village as this one. In both, the largest cluster within the brightest 4000 pixels reads L 1.00, chroma 0.003 — the same patch of sky handing over all of its chroma — and the lightness ceilings are 1.00 against 0.98. Yet the achromatic share is 27.81% against 3.36%. There the sky is blown white, the frame is lit by a single light with no colour, and the median chroma is 0.038; here two lights sit on opposite sides of the wheel and the median is 0.057. How much grey a picture holds has nothing to do with how bright it is, and everything to do with how many hues are lighting it — two pictures with ceilings at the same height can differ by 8.3 times.

The grey changed its name to violet, rose and red

Measure both pictures through the same 165°-wide window from 210° to 15°: «Aaru's Shut» returns 58,634 pixels, this one 396,979, a factor of 6.8. The extra 43.55% is not sky — sky (210°–270°) is only 1.54% — while violet at 16.35% averages lightness 0.45, rose at 14.10% averages 0.40 and red at 13.10% averages 0.43, all three bands under the frame's median of 0.48. They are shadows. So the grey did not vanish by being saturated; the cold light claimed, surface by surface, every backlit plane that previously had no hue to report. To put colour into a scene, do not reach for saturation — give it a second light with a different hue.

A shadow does not report the sky's hue

The zenith measures 233°, and the whole backlit cliff on the left reads 323°–332° — 90° away. Follow one kind of sandstone from full sun into shadow: the foreground dune at L 0.79 / chroma 0.110 / 59°, the sunlit face of the right cliff at 0.52 / 0.076 / 31°, the ground under the overhang at 0.41 / 0.060 / 27°, the left cliff at 0.33 / 0.047 / 323°. The plaster tower, lit by that same sky, returns an entirely different series: lit face L 0.79 / 0.066 / 44°, shaded face 0.61 / 0.052 / 15°. «Bantan Sango Detective Agency in the Shade» measured that shadow-blue holds the sky's hue to within a degree — but that holds only when the backlit surface has no hue of its own. When the material brings one, the shadow lands between the material and the sky, and which notch it lands on is the material's call. To paint a desert shadow, do not pull it toward blue; walk it backwards along the sandstone's own hue.

Take these colours with you

CSS variables, a Tailwind v4 theme or SVG — one click to copy into your project.

/* Village Chief's House in Slanting Light · Village Chief's House in Slanting Light — Teyvat Palette */
:root {
  --last-white-cloud: oklch(0.99 0.003 130); /* Last White Cloud #fbfcfa */
  --zenith-blue: oklch(0.89 0.047 233); /* Zenith Blue #bde1f5 */
  --sunlit-sand: oklch(0.79 0.11 59); /* Sunlit Sand #efa971 */
  --overhang-tan: oklch(0.48 0.068 34); /* Overhang Tan #7f4f44 */
  --rock-shadow-violet: oklch(0.45 0.059 295); /* Rock-Shadow Violet #574f73 */
  --cliff-shadow-rose: oklch(0.35 0.047 326); /* Cliff-Shadow Rose #473248 */
  --sunlit-awning: oklch(0.88 0.114 86); /* Sunlit Awning #f9d27c */
  --gradient-village-chiefs-house: linear-gradient(180deg, oklch(0.99 0.003 130) 0%, oklch(0.89 0.047 233) 10%, oklch(0.48 0.068 34) 35%, oklch(0.35 0.047 326) 60%, oklch(0.79 0.11 59) 100%);
}

A 1080×1350 PNG carrying the scene, its palette and every value — save it and post it as is.