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Buzzing Bordo

#c870da
Notes

Buzzing Bordo (#C870DA) 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 (290°, 59%, 65%) 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
#c870da
RGB
rgb(200, 112, 218)
HSL
hsl(290, 59%, 65%)
HWB
hwb(290 44% 15%)
OKLCH
oklch(68.2% 0.175 320.6)
HSV
hsv(290, 49%, 85%)
LAB
lab(60.72% 50.95 -40.07)
LCH
lch(60.72% 64.82 321.82)
CMYK
cmyk(8%, 49%, 0%, 15%)

Etymology

Buzzing
adjective

The progressive participle of buzz — borrowed metaphorically as a color word since the late twentieth century for hues that read as visually loud and slightly destabilizing. Buzzing yellow, buzzing magenta: the implication is saturation pushed past comfortable into the realm of optical agitation. Sits at the bright-bucket extreme alongside electric.

Bordo
noun

Polish for Bordeaux — adopted into Polish color terminology as the name for deep wine purple, the dominant Polish-folk church-textile color of the Counter-Reformation period. Bordo color refers to a Polish-Catholic Lenten purple chasuble: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the matte finish of multi-bath fermentation-and-iron-mordant wool. Slightly warmer than Russian purpurnyy.

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.

#c870da
Original
#5f8cde
Protanopia
#7996d7
Deuteranopia
#ca7e9b
Tritanopia
#8a8a8a
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
3.09:1
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
6.79:1

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