Ironclad Pulsar Fuchsia
Ironclad Pulsar Fuchsia (#AE1BCE) is a true violet with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (289°, 77%, 46%) places it in the highly saturated band at a mid lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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
English compound iron + clad — referring to the 19th-century USS-Monitor and CSS-Virginia iron-armored warships. As a color modifier, ironclad implies a saturated-and-armored-and-impenetrable quality where the hue carries the visual weight of forged-iron armor-plate. Sits at the bold-and-fortified end of the grid, parallel to fortified and armored.
Coined 1968, pulsating-radio-star. As a color modifier, pulsar implies a rotating-neutron-star-and-pulse-beam quality, the visual register of Crab-pulsar-and-Vela-pulsar hand-rotating-neutron-star-and-pulse-beam Crab-pulsar-and-Vela-and-PSR-1919 pulsar-and-rotating-neutron-star-and-pulse-beam surfaces under Crab-pulsar-and-Vela-and-PSR-1919 millisecond-and-radio-and-X-ray neutron-star-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to nova and mira in usage.
The genus Fuchsia — South American shrubs named in 1703 for the German botanist Leonhart Fuchs. The color refers to the calyx and tube of a vibrant Fuchsia magellanica hybrid: a saturated, slightly cool deep pink-magenta with the satiny finish of a tubular hummingbird-pollinated flower. Brighter than rose, warmer than orchid, with the bedding-and-basket weight of a plant genus whose flowers gave English the most attention-demanding pink in the spectrum.
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.