Paper, ink, and one orange

This site has three color families. Paper, ink, and a single vermilion.

What each one does

• Paper — backgrounds and surfaces. A warm off-white that stays comfortable over long reads.
• Ink — body text and rules. Slightly brown rather than pure black.
• Vermilion — emphasis only. Links, active states, and at most one accent per sentence.

Why the restraint is a rule

Add more colors and you start expressing hierarchy with color. Type size and spacing then have less work to do, and the page gets noisy. Cap the palette at three and hierarchy naturally moves back to size, weight, and rhythm.

Dark mode simply inverts the same structure. Paper darkens, ink lightens, and vermilion remains the only accent.