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Cleansed Sundown

#b4aad3
Notes

Cleansed Sundown (#B4AAD3) is a soft indigo 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 (255°, 32%, 75%) places it in the balanced band at a light lightness. It works as a background wash, large-area fill, or soft illustration tone. Add a darker ink of the same hue when you need type over it. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary lime. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#b4aad3
RGB
rgb(180, 170, 211)
HSL
hsl(255, 32%, 75%)
HWB
hwb(255 67% 17%)
OKLCH
oklch(76.0% 0.059 296.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6991 0.6680 0.8153)
HSV
hsv(255, 19%, 83%)
LAB
lab(71.66% 11.71 -19.46)
LCH
lch(71.66% 22.71 301.05)
CMYK
cmyk(15%, 19%, 0%, 17%)

Etymology

Cleansed
adjective

Old English clǣnsian, to make clean — past-participle of cleanse. As a color modifier, cleansed implies a clear-and-purified quality where the hue has been stripped of any contaminating tint. Sits at the crisp-and-clear end of the grid, parallel to fresh and pristine in usage.

Sundown
noun

English compound for the moment of sunset's last upper-limb contact with the horizon — the brief window when the eastern anti-solar sky is at its deepest Belt of Venus indigo before nightfall. Sundown color refers to a clear-sky eastern anti-solar horizon at sundown: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the optical complexity of Rayleigh-scattered Belt of Venus light against the rising Earth shadow.

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.

#b4aad3
Original
#a2b0d5
Protanopia
#a3afd2
Deuteranopia
#aeb0b8
Tritanopia
#afafaf
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
2.18:1
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
9.63:1

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
##B4AAD3
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6991 0.6680 0.8153)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.059

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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