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Armored Mussaenda

#9f38cd
Notes

Armored Mussaenda (#9F38CD) is a true violet 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 (281°, 60%, 51%) 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.

HEX
#9f38cd
RGB
rgb(159, 56, 205)
HSL
hsl(281, 60%, 51%)
HWB
hwb(281 22% 20%)
OKLCH
oklch(55.5% 0.224 313.0)
HSV
hsv(281, 73%, 80%)
LAB
lab(45.09% 64.25 -57.87)
LCH
lch(45.09% 86.47 317.99)
CMYK
cmyk(22%, 73%, 0%, 20%)

Etymology

Armored
adjective

Old French armëure, armor — past-participle of armor, derived from Latin arma (weapons). As a color modifier, armored implies a saturated-and-armor-clad-and-defensive quality, the deep-rich color of medieval-knight full-plate-armor visible-and-formidable battle-presence. Sits at the bold-and-fortified end of the grid, parallel to ironclad and shielded.

Mussaenda
noun

Asian Mussaenda philippica — a tropical shrub cultivated worldwide as a garden plant for its enlarged leaf-like bracts surrounding small inconspicuous flowers. Mussaenda color refers to a fully developed Mussaenda philippica bract-cluster: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the matte finish of leaf-tissue anthocyanin-rich modified sepals. The Sinhalese name mussaenda refers to the bract-and-flower structure.

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

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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.

#9f38cd
Original
#0065d1
Protanopia
#296dca
Deuteranopia
#9a5980
Tritanopia
#595959
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).
AAon White
5.36:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AA Largeon Black
3.92:1

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