Refined Tornado
Refined Tornado (#260020) is a deep violet with a jewel character. It carries the deep, saturated richness of a gemstone. Authoritative and slightly formal, it works well for type and heavy UI elements. Its HSL profile (309°, 100%, 7%) places it in the highly saturated band at a dark lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary green. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin re- plus fīnis — past-participle of refine. As a color modifier, refined implies a neutral-and-elegantly-stripped-down-and-cultivated quality, the neutral color of Edwardian-and-Belle-Époque refined-and-stripped-of-excess elegant-and-cultivated interior-decoration-and-dress-attire coordinated-color tone. Sits at the neutral-and-cultivated end of the grid, parallel to cultured and polished in usage.
Spanish tornado, turned via Latin tonare (to thunder) — the deep-cool-gray funnel-cloud of Great Plains supercell thunderstorms, the iconic Wizard-of-Oz Kansas-funnel weather. Tornado color refers to an F4-rated funnel-cloud over Oklahoma in May at peak tornado-season: a dark cool-gray with the optical complexity of cumulonimbus-and-debris-cloud against the supercell-front sky.
Closest matches
The nearest named color in three reference sources, ranked by perceptual distance (ΔE76 in CIELAB). ΔE < 1 is imperceptible to most viewers; ΔE > 10 is clearly different. When two sources point to the same hex they’re merged into one tile; click any to open that color’s page.
Variations
Click any swatch to exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
How this color appears to viewers with the four major color-vision-deficiency types. Computed via the Machado (2009) physiologically-based model. If a tile matches the original, the color reads the same to that viewer.
The color used as foreground text against pure white and pure black, with the contrast ratio and WCAG 2.1 grade. Aim for AA (4.5:1) for body text and AA Large (3:1) for 18 pt+ headlines; AAA (7:1) is the gold standard for long-form reading surfaces.