Garish Toga
Garish Toga (#C87AE4) 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 (284°, 66%, 69%) 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
Middle English garen, to stare — adjectival suffix -ish. As a color modifier, garish implies a saturated-and-eye-stunning-and-overdone quality, the bright color of Las-Vegas-and-Coney-Island over-the-top neon-marquee display. Sits at the bright-and-flamboyant end of the grid, parallel to gaudy and lurid in usage.
The Roman ceremonial-citizen mantle — particularly the toga picta (painted toga) worn by triumphant generals and emperors, dyed entirely in Tyrian purple with gold-thread embroidered figures. Toga color refers to a Roman-imperial toga picta on a triumphal arch spolia relief: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the matte finish of multi-bath Tyrian shellfish-dye on multi-rolled woolen toga cloth. Distinct from the white toga virilis.
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.