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Dense Sanded Violet

#665fbd
Notes

Dense Sanded Violet (#665FBD) is a true blue with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (244°, 42%, 56%) 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 yellow. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#665fbd
RGB
rgb(102, 95, 189)
HSL
hsl(244, 42%, 56%)
HWB
hwb(244 37% 26%)
OKLCH
oklch(53.8% 0.143 283.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3953 0.3735 0.7179)
HSV
hsv(244, 50%, 74%)
LAB
lab(45.20% 27.31 -48.77)
LCH
lch(45.20% 55.90 299.25)
CMYK
cmyk(46%, 50%, 0%, 26%)

Etymology

Dense
adjective

Latin dēnsus, thick / crowded — sharing root with English condense. As a color modifier, dense implies a saturated-and-tightly-packed quality where the hue carries maximum pigmentation per visual unit-of-area. Sits at the bold-and-saturated end of the grid, parallel to thick and concentrated in usage.

Sanded
modifier

Old English sandian, to-sand. As a color modifier, sanded implies a hand-sanded-and-smoothed-wood quality, the visual register of Shaker-and-Mid-Century-Modern-sanded hand-sanded-and-smoothed-and-finished wood-and-stone-and-metal Shaker-and-Mid-Century-Modern hand-sanded-and-smoothed surfaces under Shaker-and-Mid-Century-Modern hand-sanded-and-smoothed workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to honed and buffed 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.

#665fbd
Original
#366ec0
Protanopia
#3168bb
Deuteranopia
#497385
Tritanopia
#676767
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
5.33:1
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
3.94:1

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
##665FBD
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3953 0.3735 0.7179)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.143

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.

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