Pure Murasaki
Pure Murasaki (#B35CCB) 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 (287°, 52%, 58%) 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
Latin purus, clean, unmixed — applied to color since antiquity for hues that contain only one pigment without dilution by white, black, or another color. Pure red is the textbook ideal: high saturation, mid lightness, no shift. Sits at the bold-bucket center, parallel to true and strong.
Japanese 紫, purple — historically the noble color of the Heian-period imperial court, derived from Lithospermum erythrorhizon (gromwell) root dye. Murasaki color refers to a Heian-period court silk kinu robe: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the silk luster of multi-bath gromwell-root dye. The word also names Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji (1010 CE).
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.