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Bold Mussaenda

#b268d7
Notes

Bold Mussaenda (#B268D7) 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°, 58%, 63%) 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
#b268d7
RGB
rgb(178, 104, 215)
HSL
hsl(280, 58%, 63%)
HWB
hwb(280 41% 16%)
OKLCH
oklch(64.4% 0.174 313.3)
HSV
hsv(280, 52%, 84%)
LAB
lab(56.36% 48.44 -45.43)
LCH
lch(56.36% 66.41 316.83)
CMYK
cmyk(17%, 52%, 0%, 16%)

Etymology

Bold
adjective

Old English beald, brave, courageous — a quality word that crossed over to color in the late seventeenth century. Bold describes a color that asserts itself: high saturation combined with mid lightness, where the hue presents itself without compromise. Sits at the center of the bold-bucket grid, near strong and rich. Closer to a presence word than a pigment word.

Mussaenda
noun

Asian Mussaenda philippica — a tropical shrub cultivated worldwide as a garden plant for its enlarged leaf-like bracts surrounding small inconspicuous flowers. Mussaenda color refers to a fully developed Mussaenda philippica bract-cluster: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the matte finish of leaf-tissue anthocyanin-rich modified sepals. The Sinhalese name mussaenda refers to the bract-and-flower structure.

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

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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.

#b268d7
Original
#4d83db
Protanopia
#6489d4
Deuteranopia
#af7a96
Tritanopia
#808080
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
3.59:1
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
5.85:1

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