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Plotted Speedwell

#b3a0f5
Notes

Plotted Speedwell (#B3A0F5) is a soft indigo with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (253°, 81%, 79%) places it in the highly saturated band at a light lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary yellow. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#b3a0f5
RGB
rgb(179, 160, 245)
HSL
hsl(253, 81%, 79%)
HWB
hwb(253 63% 4%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.4% 0.121 293.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6895 0.6301 0.9379)
HSV
hsv(253, 35%, 96%)
LAB
lab(70.40% 24.77 -40.00)
LCH
lch(70.40% 47.05 301.76)
CMYK
cmyk(27%, 35%, 0%, 4%)

Etymology

Plotted
adjective

Old English plot, small piece of ground — past-participle of plot. As a color modifier, plotted implies a clear-and-coordinate-mapped quality, the crisp color of Cartesian-and-graph-paper coordinate-plotted scientific-and-engineering data-visualization plot-line. Sits at the crisp-and-mapped end of the grid, parallel to mapped and surveyed in usage.

Speedwell
noun

Veronica chamaedrys, the small-flowered creeping speedwell of European hedgerows and lawn margins — named speedwell in folk Latin for its old reputation as a wound-healing herb. The color refers to a fresh speedwell flower: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted bright blue with the matte finish of a small four-petaled bloom. Cooler than periwinkle, warmer than cornflower, with the wildflower weight of a plant most often noticed by accident in a lawn.

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.

#b3a0f5
Original
#89adf8
Protanopia
#8babf3
Deuteranopia
#a5afbf
Tritanopia
#aaaaaa
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
2.27:1
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
9.26:1

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
##B3A0F5
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6895 0.6301 0.9379)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.121

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

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