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Sturdy Allium

#7980d8
Notes

Sturdy Allium (#7980D8) 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 (236°, 55%, 66%) 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
#7980d8
RGB
rgb(121, 128, 216)
HSL
hsl(236, 55%, 66%)
HWB
hwb(236 47% 15%)
OKLCH
oklch(63.3% 0.131 278.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4795 0.5011 0.8233)
HSV
hsv(236, 44%, 85%)
LAB
lab(56.55% 19.98 -46.04)
LCH
lch(56.55% 50.19 293.46)
CMYK
cmyk(44%, 41%, 0%, 15%)

Etymology

Sturdy
adjective

Old French estourdi, stunned, reckless — drifted in English to mean robust, well-built. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as durable and unfussy — the working browns of saddle leather, the working greens of pasture wool. Sits in the bold-and-warm corner alongside robust and solid.

Allium
noun

Ornamental onion (Allium christophii, A. giganteum, A. aflatunense) — Central Asian native bulbs cultivated as architectural early-summer perennials with spherical umbels on bare stems. Allium color refers to a fully bloomed A. christophii umbel: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the matte finish of dense radiating six-tepalled florets. The architectural allium globe drifted into mid-20th-century cottage-garden style via Beth Chatto.

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.

#7980d8
Original
#5f8bdb
Protanopia
#5984d6
Deuteranopia
#5992a1
Tritanopia
#858585
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).
AA Largeon White
3.56:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon Black
5.89:1

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
##7980D8
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4795 0.5011 0.8233)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.131

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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