DMC 987 — Dark Forest Green

The Shadowed Heart of the Forest

Walk into a dense conifer forest in July and look at the shadows on the forest floor — not the patches of sunlight that dapple through, but the permanent shade between the trunks, under the canopy where light barely penetrates. That green-dark is DMC 987 Dark Forest Green's territory. It isn't purely dark — it still reads as a rich, saturated green rather than a black-influenced neutral — but it carries real depth and weight that makes it fundamentally different from the lighter forest greens in its family.

Within the forest green progression, DMC 987 is the anchor. DMC 988 (Medium Forest Green) is its lighter partner, and DMC 989 (Forest Green) is lighter still. Having all three gives you a complete three-value system for foliage, tree canopy, and dense plant work that models convincingly from shadow through midtone. Without the dark anchor that 987 provides, foliage shading can feel flat and underdeveloped — there's no depth to make the lighter values read as truly lit by comparison.

Christmas and Holiday Design Workload

DMC 987 is one of the standard Christmas-season threads that stitchers reach for reliably every October when they start their holiday WIPs. Christmas tree shadow areas, holly leaf shading, wreath depth, and pine bough details all use this color for their darkest green values. Paired with DMC 699 (Christmas Green) for mid-tones and DMC 701 (Light Christmas Green) for highlights, it creates a complete Christmas foliage palette with real visual richness.

One thing worth knowing: many Christmas and holiday patterns from major designers specifically call for DMC 987 by name as the shadow color in their tree and foliage elements. It appears on pattern supply lists so reliably that keeping several skeins in your holiday stash makes practical sense. Running out of the shadow color mid-project is the kind of disruption that can stop a holiday countdown design in its tracks.

Landscape and Environmental Designs

For stitchers who work on large landscape scenes — forest panoramas, nature reserves, national park-inspired designs — DMC 987 handles the dense shadow areas of tree canopy, the ground foliage in heavily shaded areas, and the receding distance where forest compresses into deep dark. In atmospheric perspective effects, where objects in the distance appear darker and less differentiated, 987 represents the shadowed mid-distance before the horizon colors take over.

Pine trees, ferns, ivy, deep moss, and dense undergrowth all draw naturally from this color range. In Celtic and nature-inspired decorative designs — a popular genre that draws on natural motifs with stylized treatments — 987 often handles the ground-level foliage and shadow elements that give the design its sense of layered depth.

For SAL projects with forest or woodland themes, DMC 987 typically appears early in the stitching order as part of establishing the darkest design elements. Many stitchers find that completing the darkest values first — the 987 areas — gives them a reference point for judging how the lighter greens will read by comparison, which helps avoid the common mistake of thinking a midtone green looks darker than it actually does in the context of the full design.