Buzzing Salvia
Buzzing Salvia (#6D88E9) 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 (227°, 74%, 67%) 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.
Etymology
The progressive participle of buzz — borrowed metaphorically as a color word since the late twentieth century for hues that read as visually loud and slightly destabilizing. Buzzing yellow, buzzing magenta: the implication is saturation pushed past comfortable into the realm of optical agitation. Sits at the bright-bucket extreme alongside electric.
The genus Salvia — the sages of the kitchen and ornamental sages of the garden — over 900 species, many with vivid blue-violet flower spikes that distinguish ornamental cultivars from culinary forms. The color refers to a fresh Salvia farinacea (mealy-cup sage) spike: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted blue with the matte finish of small lipped flowers along a single stem. Cooler than veronica, warmer than larkspur.
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.