Inky Dragonfruit
Inky Dragonfruit (#742058) is a deep magenta 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 (320°, 57%, 29%) 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
An adjectival form of ink, used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century to suggest the deep saturated black of fresh writing ink seen against white paper. Less about literal blackness than about the optical density of a fluid that absorbs light through its full thickness. Used at the dark end of any saturated hue: an inky blue is a deep saturated blue with the optical depth of pigment in solution.
The fruit of Hylocereus undatus, the climbing cactus native to Central America and now grown across Southeast Asia. The color refers to the inside flesh of the red-fleshed variety: a saturated, slightly cool deep pink-magenta with the matte finish of betalain pigment in a high-water-content cactus fruit. Cooler than raspberry, warmer than peony, with the contemporary-supermarket weight of a fruit that's only become a global category in the past two decades.
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.