Rich Kusumbha
Rich Kusumbha (#AE2A8C) is a true magenta 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 (315°, 61%, 42%) 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 French riche, wealthy, abundant — applied to color since the medieval period for hues that read as plentiful in pigment. Rich red, rich brown: the implication is depth combined with saturation, a color that gives the eye more to absorb. Sits at the saturated mid-light corner of the engine's grid, slightly warmer than bold and deeper than vivid.
Sanskrit कुसुम्भ, safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) — the floral source of the deep red-pink dye used in Vedic-period Indian textiles and as the kumkuma powder of Hindu and Buddhist ritual. Kusumbha color refers to a freshly pressed Carthamus tinctorius petal-extract on Indian cotton: a saturated, slightly cool deep magenta with the matte finish of safflower-pigment-dyed hand-spun cotton.
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.