colors
Back to gallery

Rich Column Violet

#4959b7
Notes

Rich Column Violet (#4959B7) is a true blue with an earthy character. It leans grounded and natural, the kind of color that plays well with wood, clay, linen, and warm neutrals. Its HSL profile (231°, 43%, 50%) places it in the balanced band at a mid lightness. It works across type, buttons, and borders, saturated enough to feel deliberate but balanced enough to not fight the rest of the palette. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#4959b7
RGB
rgb(73, 89, 183)
HSL
hsl(231, 43%, 50%)
HWB
hwb(231 29% 28%)
OKLCH
oklch(50.2% 0.149 272.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.2986 0.3472 0.6940)
HSV
hsv(231, 60%, 72%)
LAB
lab(41.18% 22.91 -51.83)
LCH
lch(41.18% 56.66 293.85)
CMYK
cmyk(60%, 51%, 0%, 28%)

Etymology

Rich
adjective

Old French riche, wealthy, abundant — applied to color since the medieval period for hues that read as plentiful in pigment. Rich red, rich brown: the implication is depth combined with saturation, a color that gives the eye more to absorb. Sits at the saturated mid-light corner of the engine's grid, slightly warmer than bold and deeper than vivid.

Column
modifier

Latin columna, column. As a color modifier, column implies a vertical-Doric-and-Ionic-and-Corinthian quality, the visual register of Greek-and-Roman-Column hand-cut Doric-Ionic-Corinthian fluted-and-capital classical-column architectural surfaces under Greek-and-Roman classical-column architectural light. Sits at the modifier-and-architecture end of the grid, parallel to pillar and plinth in usage.

Violet
noun

Viola odorata, the European sweet violet — small, fragrant, and the original meaning of the color name in English (the Violet of the rainbow). The color refers to a fresh sweet violet blossom in late winter: a saturated, slightly red-shifted deep blue-purple with the matte finish of small five-petaled flower. Cooler than amethyst, warmer than indigo, with the perfumed weight of a flower used in Roman garlands and Victorian eau de toilette.

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 explore

Harmonies

Accessibility

Color-vision simulation

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.

#4959b7
Original
#2566ba
Protanopia
#085db5
Deuteranopia
#006f7f
Tritanopia
#5c5c5c
Achromatopsia
WCAG contrast

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.

The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon White
6.18:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AA Largeon Black
3.40:1

Wide gamut

Display P3 representation

The CSS Color 4 wide-gamut form of this color. Both swatches render the same color on every display — the P3 form only diverges from sRGB when a designer pushes channels outside sRGB's reach.

sRGB hex
sRGB hex
##4959B7
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.2986 0.3472 0.6940)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.149

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

Related Colors

Canvas