Buzzing Stokesia
Buzzing Stokesia (#798BFA) is a soft 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 (232°, 93%, 73%) places it in the highly saturated band at a light lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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.
North American Stokes' aster (Stokesia laevis) — a southeastern-coastal-plain Asteraceae native cultivated as a ground-cover perennial with fringed lavender ray-flowers. Stokesia color refers to a fully opened Stokesia laevis flower head: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the velvet finish of finely fringed ray-flowers around a paler central disk. Named for Jonathan Stokes, an English physician-botanist of the 18th century.
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.