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Drawn Strobilanthes

#aa8db8
Notes

Drawn Strobilanthes (#AA8DB8) 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 (280°, 23%, 64%) 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 green. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#aa8db8
RGB
rgb(170, 141, 184)
HSL
hsl(280, 23%, 64%)
HWB
hwb(280 55% 28%)
OKLCH
oklch(68.5% 0.070 314.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6483 0.5572 0.7102)
HSV
hsv(280, 23%, 72%)
LAB
lab(62.56% 18.93 -18.35)
LCH
lch(62.56% 26.36 315.91)
CMYK
cmyk(8%, 23%, 0%, 28%)

Etymology

Drawn
adjective

Old English dragan, to draw — past-participle of draw. As a color modifier, drawn implies a clear-and-line-and-mark quality, the crisp color of Old-Master-and-Modernist hand-drawn studio-and-life-class observational-drawing graphite-and-charcoal lines. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to etched and drafted in usage.

Strobilanthes
noun

Asian Persian shield (Strobilanthes dyerianus) — a Burmese-native evergreen shrub cultivated worldwide for its iridescent violet-and-silver leaf coloration. Strobilanthes color refers to a Strobilanthes dyerianus leaf upper surface in raking light: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the iridescent satin finish of structurally colored cuticular leaf surface. The genus name comes from the Greek stróbilos (cone) and anthos (flower).

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.

#aa8db8
Original
#8796ba
Protanopia
#8d98b7
Deuteranopia
#a9929c
Tritanopia
#969696
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
2.91:1
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
7.21:1

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
##AA8DB8
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6483 0.5572 0.7102)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.070

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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