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Buttoned Mauve

#b2788a
Notes

Buttoned Mauve (#B2788A) is a true red with a warm character. It leans warm, pulling light toward red, orange, and yellow. Naturally inviting, it suits editorial and hospitality contexts. Its HSL profile (341°, 27%, 58%) 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 teal. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#b2788a
RGB
rgb(178, 120, 138)
HSL
hsl(341, 27%, 58%)
HWB
hwb(341 47% 30%)
OKLCH
oklch(63.7% 0.076 359.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6648 0.4804 0.5397)
HSV
hsv(341, 33%, 70%)
LAB
lab(56.82% 25.30 -0.49)
LCH
lch(56.82% 25.30 358.88)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 33%, 22%, 30%)

Etymology

Buttoned
adjective

Old French bouton, button — past-participle of button. As a color modifier, buttoned implies a clear-and-fastened-and-formal quality, the crisp color of Edwardian-period formal-attire fully-fastened-and-formally-dressed gentleman's-attire. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to trim and pressed in usage.

Mauve
noun

The first synthetic aniline dye — an accidental product of William Perkin's 1856 attempt to synthesize quinine, which yielded a stable purple instead. Mauve (French for mallow) became the chemical-industry breakthrough that reshaped textile coloring. The color refers to a freshly mauve-dyed silk: a soft, slightly red-shifted pale purple with the slight luster of synthetic-dyed natural fiber. Lighter than violet, warmer than lilac, with the industrial-history weight of the pigment that founded modern chemistry.

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.

#b2788a
Original
#7f828b
Protanopia
#8d8c89
Deuteranopia
#bb757e
Tritanopia
#868686
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
3.53:1
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
5.95:1

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
##B2788A
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6648 0.4804 0.5397)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.076

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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