Saturated Aronia
Saturated Aronia (#9B1890) is a true 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 (305°, 73%, 35%) 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 green. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
From the Latin saturatus, past participle of saturare, to fill. A technical color term in modern usage — saturation is one of the three axes of HSL (with hue and lightness). As a modifier, saturated implies that the hue is at or near its maximum chromatic intensity. Sits at the bold-and-bright top of the grid.
North American chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) — a Rosaceae shrub native to eastern North America whose deep-violet drupes are the most polyphenol-rich of any commonly cultivated berry. Aronia color refers to a freshly picked Aronia melanocarpa drupe-cluster: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the matte finish of anthocyanin-and-tannin-rich chokeberry. The genus name comes from the Greek aría, small fruit-bush.
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.