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Dense Patchouli

#70237f
Notes

Dense Patchouli (#70237F) is a deep violet 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 (290°, 57%, 32%) 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.

HEX
#70237f
RGB
rgb(112, 35, 127)
HSL
hsl(290, 57%, 32%)
HWB
hwb(290 14% 50%)
OKLCH
oklch(41.6% 0.158 320.6)
HSV
hsv(290, 72%, 50%)
LAB
lab(29.86% 46.82 -35.90)
LCH
lch(29.86% 59.00 322.52)
CMYK
cmyk(12%, 72%, 0%, 50%)

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.

Patchouli
noun

Asian Pogostemon cablin — an evergreen mint-family shrub native to Southeast Asia, cultivated for its essential-oil aromatic-leaf trade and bearing dense spikes of pale-violet labiate flowers. Patchouli color refers to a fully bloomed Pogostemon cablin spike on an Indonesian shamrock-leaf shrub: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the matte finish of dense small two-lipped patchouli corollas. The English name comes from the Tamil paccuḷ.

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

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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.

#70237f
Original
#004182
Protanopia
#2c497d
Deuteranopia
#71344e
Tritanopia
#3a3a3a
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).
AAAon White
9.39:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
Failon Black
2.24:1

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