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Soft quartz

#b29bb2
Notes

Soft quartz (#B29BB2) 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 (300°, 13%, 65%) 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
#b29bb2
RGB
rgb(178, 155, 178)
HSL
hsl(300, 13%, 65%)
HWB
hwb(300 61% 30%)
OKLCH
oklch(71.7% 0.042 326.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6831 0.6111 0.6920)
HSV
hsv(300, 13%, 70%)
LAB
lab(66.61% 12.63 -8.79)
LCH
lch(66.61% 15.39 325.14)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 13%, 0%, 30%)

Etymology

Soft
adjective

Old English sōfte, gentle — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as low-contrast and unaggressive. Soft pink, soft gray: low saturation combined with optical gentleness. Sits across the hushed and pale buckets alongside gentle.

quartz
noun

Silicon dioxide — the most abundant single mineral on Earth's continental crust, occurring as everything from beach sand to gem-grade rock crystal. Quartz as a color refers to a polished pale-gray quartz crystal: a soft, very pale slightly cool gray with the high specular shine of a translucent silicate. Cooler than pearl, warmer than mist.

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.

#b29bb2
Original
#9aa0b3
Protanopia
#9ea3b1
Deuteranopia
#b49da3
Tritanopia
#a2a2a2
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
2.55:1
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
8.22:1

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
##B29BB2
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6831 0.6111 0.6920)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.042

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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