Gallant Patchouli
Gallant Patchouli (#711A7E) 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 (292°, 66%, 30%) 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
Old French galant, brave / charming — present-participle of galer (to make merry). As a color modifier, gallant implies a saturated-and-chivalrous-and-confident quality, the deep-rich color of Three-Musketeers and Cyrano-de-Bergerac swashbuckling adventure tradition. Sits at the bold-and-chivalrous end of the grid, parallel to valiant and heroic.
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
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.