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Brimming Mussaenda

#b555aa
Notes

Brimming Mussaenda (#B555AA) 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 (307°, 39%, 52%) 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.

HEX
#b555aa
RGB
rgb(181, 85, 170)
HSL
hsl(307, 39%, 52%)
HWB
hwb(307 33% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(59.8% 0.162 331.9)
HSV
hsv(307, 53%, 71%)
LAB
lab(50.95% 50.19 -28.02)
LCH
lch(50.95% 57.48 330.82)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 53%, 6%, 29%)

Etymology

Brimming
adjective

Old English brymme, brim / edge — present-participle of brim. As a color modifier, brimming implies a saturated-and-overflowing quality where the hue spills past the edge of its visual container with rich pigmentation. Sits at the bold-and-saturated end of the grid, parallel to replete and abundant.

Mussaenda
noun

Asian Mussaenda philippica — a tropical shrub cultivated worldwide as a garden plant for its enlarged leaf-like bracts surrounding small inconspicuous flowers. Mussaenda color refers to a fully developed Mussaenda philippica bract-cluster: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the matte finish of leaf-tissue anthocyanin-rich modified sepals. The Sinhalese name mussaenda refers to the bract-and-flower structure.

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

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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.

#b555aa
Original
#5271ad
Protanopia
#6e7ea7
Deuteranopia
#bc5c78
Tritanopia
#707070
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
4.33:1
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
4.84:1

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