Rugged Azalea
Rugged Azalea (#96187E) is a deep magenta 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 (311°, 72%, 34%) 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 Norse rugga, rough / coarse — adjectival suffix -ed. As a color modifier, rugged implies a saturated-and-rough-and-weathered quality, the deep-rich color of Scottish-Highlands-and-Norwegian-fjord outdoor-and-mountain landscape. Sits at the bold-and-weathered end of the grid, parallel to tough and sinewy in usage.
Rhododendron subgenus Pentanthera — particularly the deep-magenta Rhododendron indicum cultivars (the Japanese satsuki azalea), cultivated as bonsai and bedding shrubs since the Heian period. Azalea color refers to a fully bloomed Rhododendron indicum terminal truss in a Kyoto temple garden: a saturated, slightly cool deep magenta with the velvet finish of fresh five-petaled bell-flowers in dense terminal clusters.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
This color is chromatic enough that authoring it as P3 native (instead of clamping to sRGB) gives a perceptibly more saturated render on wide-gamut displays — modern Macs, iPhones, iPads, and most recent OLED laptops.