colors
Back to gallery

Sonorous Petunia

#a95cca
Notes

Sonorous Petunia (#A95CCA) 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 (282°, 51%, 58%) 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
#a95cca
RGB
rgb(169, 92, 202)
HSL
hsl(282, 51%, 58%)
HWB
hwb(282 36% 21%)
OKLCH
oklch(60.9% 0.175 314.7)
HSV
hsv(282, 54%, 79%)
LAB
lab(52.24% 49.49 -44.64)
LCH
lch(52.24% 66.65 317.95)
CMYK
cmyk(16%, 54%, 0%, 21%)

Etymology

Sonorous
adjective

Latin sonōrus, resounding — derived from sonus (sound). As a color modifier, sonorous implies a saturated-and-richly-vibrating quality where the hue carries the deep-resonance visual register of a cathedral-organ-pipe low-note. Sits at the bold-and-resonant end of the grid, parallel to resonant and deep in usage.

Petunia
noun

Petunia × atkinsiana, the modern garden hybrid bred from South American Petunia species in the nineteenth century — now the most-planted annual bedding flower in North America. The color refers to a deep purple petunia in summer container bloom: a saturated, slightly red-shifted deep purple with the satiny finish of trumpet-shaped flowers. Cooler than orchid, warmer than violet, with the bedding-plant weight of a genus bred for nearly endless color and continuous bloom.

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.

#a95cca
Original
#4178ce
Protanopia
#5a7fc7
Deuteranopia
#a76e8a
Tritanopia
#747474
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).
AA Largeon White
4.14:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon Black
5.07:1

Related Colors

Canvas