Mighty Helio
Mighty Helio (#A21DA0) 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 (301°, 70%, 37%) 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
Old English mihtig, strong — adjectival suffix -y, sharing root with German mächtig. As a color modifier, mighty implies a saturated-and-strong-presence quality, where the hue commands visual attention through pure pigmentation strength. Sits at the bold-and-saturated end of the grid, parallel to forceful and commanding in tone.
A shortened form of heliotrope — sometimes used as a slightly more genteel color name in late-Victorian fashion catalogues, particularly for the pale lavender-purple silks of mourning dress's transition out of full black. The color refers to a Victorian Helio silk: a soft, slightly muted pale purple with the satiny finish of a fabric dyed to register a specific point in the mourning calendar. Lighter than mauve, cooler than lilac.
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.