Patrician Fairywren
Patrician Fairywren (#505DEA) is a true blue with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (235°, 79%, 62%) places it in the highly saturated band at a mid 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 yellow. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin patrīcius, of the noble class — derived from pater (father). As a color modifier, patrician implies a saturated-and-aristocratic-and-Roman-Republic quality, the deep-rich color of Roman-Patrician-class toga and senatorial-livery hereditary-aristocratic dress. Sits at the bold-and-aristocratic end of the grid, parallel to senatorial and imperial.
Australian Splendid Fairywren (Malurus splendens) — a small Maluridae passerine of arid southern Australia, whose breeding-plumage males are a luminous all-over violet-blue. Fairywren color refers to a breeding-plumage male Malurus splendens in mulga scrub: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the iridescent satin finish of structurally colored feather barbs over melanin substrate. Among the most saturated naturally occurring blue-violets in vertebrate plumage.
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.