Burning Toadflax
Burning Toadflax (#9F7FE1) is a true indigo 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 (260°, 62%, 69%) 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 lime. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
The progressive participle of burn — used as a color modifier for hues that read as actively luminous, as if combustion is in progress. Burning red, burning orange: the implication is high saturation combined with thermal heat. Sits in the bright-and-warm corner alongside hot and flame. Slightly more active than smoldering.
Eurasian Linaria vulgaris and L. purpurea — snapdragon cousins with hooded violet-and-yellow flowers naturalized across temperate roadsides and waste-ground. Toadflax color refers to a fully bloomed Linaria purpurea spike: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the matte finish of dense small two-lipped snapdragon-form flowers. The Old English name refers to the linear flax-like foliage of the wild Linaria genus.
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.