Lit Brunfelsia
Lit Brunfelsia (#C174CE) 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 (291°, 48%, 63%) 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
The past participle of light — short and modern. Used as a color word since the late twentieth century for hues that read as if they were illuminated. Lit yellow, lit pink: the implication is luminance combined with the slight optical impression of an internal light source. Sits in the bright-bucket extreme alongside electric.
South American yesterday-today-tomorrow (Brunfelsia pauciflora) — a Brazilian Atlantic forest native shrub whose flowers open deep-violet on day one, fade to lavender on day two, and white on day three. Brunfelsia color refers to a freshly opened day-one Brunfelsia pauciflora flower: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the velvet finish of fresh five-petaled flat-corolla. Named for Otto Brunfels, German Renaissance botanist.
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.