Incandescent Thistle
Incandescent Thistle (#B881FF) 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 (266°, 100%, 75%) 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 lime. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin incandēscēns, growing-hot — present-participle of incandēscere, sharing root with candere (to shine). As a color modifier, incandescent implies a saturated-and-glowing-hot quality, the bright color of tungsten-filament-glow incandescent-lamp light. Sits at the bright-and-warm end of the grid, parallel to glowing and blazing in usage.
The thistles — Onopordum, Cirsium, Carduus — spiny composite-family perennials whose tufted purple flower heads adorn the Scottish national emblem and uncountable European pasture margins. The color refers to a fresh thistle flower at peak bloom: a soft, slightly red-shifted pale purple with the matte finish of tufted florets. Lighter than heather, warmer than lavender, with the heraldic weight of a flower that defends itself with thorns.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
This color is chromatic enough that authoring it as P3 native (instead of clamping to sRGB) gives a perceptibly more saturated render on wide-gamut displays — modern Macs, iPhones, iPads, and most recent OLED laptops.