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Floaty Larkspur

#a29fbf
Notes

Floaty Larkspur (#A29FBF) is a true blue 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 (246°, 20%, 69%) places it in the muted 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 yellow. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#a29fbf
RGB
rgb(162, 159, 191)
HSL
hsl(246, 20%, 69%)
HWB
hwb(246 62% 25%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.6% 0.046 289.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6332 0.6239 0.7391)
HSV
hsv(246, 17%, 75%)
LAB
lab(66.70% 7.62 -16.05)
LCH
lch(66.70% 17.77 295.39)
CMYK
cmyk(15%, 17%, 0%, 25%)

Etymology

Floaty
adjective

Old English flotian, to float — adjectival suffix -y. As a color modifier, floaty implies a pale-and-light-and-suspended quality where the hue carries the visual register of Edwardian-period tulle-and-chiffon light-and-airy float-and-drift textile movement. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to buoyant and floating in usage.

Larkspur
noun

Delphinium consolida and its garden cousins — the tall spired wildflower of European meadows whose name means little lark for the spurred shape of its blossoms. The color refers to a fresh larkspur stalk in cottage-garden bloom: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted blue with the matte finish of multi-petaled flowers stacked along a single stem. Cooler than cornflower, warmer than periwinkle, with the literary weight of a flower in Tennyson and Heaney alike.

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 explore

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.

#a29fbf
Original
#98a3c0
Protanopia
#98a2be
Deuteranopia
#9ca4aa
Tritanopia
#a2a2a2
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).
Failon White
2.55:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon Black
8.25:1

Wide gamut

Display P3 representation

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.

sRGB hex
sRGB hex
##A29FBF
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6332 0.6239 0.7391)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.046

This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.

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