Sunken Brunfelsia
Sunken Brunfelsia (#540C50) 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 (303°, 75%, 19%) places it in the balanced band at a dark lightness. It works well as a headline, icon, or deep background in an otherwise light layout, pairing cleanly with cream, bone, and warm neutrals. 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
The past participle of sink — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for surfaces that read as receded or enclosed. Sunken implies a slightly cool darkness with the optical quality of a recessed plane: the sunken eye sockets of a sculpture, the depressed channels of an Anglo-Saxon enamel. Sits in the deep-and-cool corner, closer to shadowed than to brooding.
South American yesterday-today-tomorrow (Brunfelsia pauciflora) — a Brazilian Atlantic forest native shrub whose flowers open deep-violet on day one, fade to lavender on day two, and white on day three. Brunfelsia color refers to a freshly opened day-one Brunfelsia pauciflora flower: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the velvet finish of fresh five-petaled flat-corolla. Named for Otto Brunfels, German Renaissance botanist.
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.