To quote wiki:

Clockwork depths have level icons that denote the type of level Knights will delve into. There are three things Knights should look for:
* Background color: This indicates the element of the depth.
* Icon: This determines the type of depth.
* Icon color: This tells Knights what kind of monsters lurk in the depth.

http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Gate

Isn't this a bit misleading? In my experience, the element of a level acctually has little effect on the type of damage one takes. For example, going through T2 of the current Coral Queen Gate runs you across several Poison levels. Thinking I could trust the wiki, I came equipped with Elemental defense gear. Lo and behold, the only enemies I find Undead, Fiends, Slimes, and Chromas...A ton of shadow and piercing. They were the Poison variety, and added the Poison status effect, but none of them dealt Elemental damage as the Poison theme would suggest.

So wouldn't it be more accurate to say:

* Background color: This indicates the elemental theme of the depth and determines which status ailments will appear.
* Icon: This determines the map style and layout of the depth.
* Icon color: This tells Knights what kind of monsters lurk in the depth, and in turn which damage type to expect.

I added in the "map style" part just to be more specific. Anyways, the point is that the information on the wiki seems misleading and as a noob I ended up very confused that background color didn't equate to damage type, since that's what the it looks like the wiki is trying to say. Since I'm new and have never edited the wiki, I'm hesitant to do anything like this without running it by others first.