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Aflame Tulip

#c97bd9
Notes

Aflame Tulip (#C97BD9) 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°, 55%, 67%) 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
#c97bd9
RGB
rgb(201, 123, 217)
HSL
hsl(290, 55%, 67%)
HWB
hwb(290 48% 15%)
OKLCH
oklch(70.0% 0.156 320.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7455 0.4966 0.8301)
HSV
hsv(290, 43%, 85%)
LAB
lab(63.01% 45.34 -35.93)
LCH
lch(63.01% 57.85 321.61)
CMYK
cmyk(7%, 43%, 0%, 15%)

Etymology

Aflame
adjective

Old English on-flamme, on-fire. As a color modifier, aflame implies a saturated-and-burning-bright quality, the bright color of autumn-Maple-and-Oak peak-color deciduous-foliage and Bonfire-Night large-flame fire emission. Sits at the bright-and-warm end of the grid, parallel to flaming and blazing in usage.

Tulip
noun

The genus Tulipa — Central Asian bulbs cultivated in Ottoman gardens, brought to Europe in the sixteenth century, and famously the subject of tulipomania in the 1630s Dutch Republic. The color refers to a deep purple Tulipa hybrid in spring bloom: a saturated, slightly red-shifted deep purple with the satiny finish of a six-petaled goblet. Cooler than orchid, warmer than indigo, with the cultivation history of a flower that briefly cost more than houses.

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 explore

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.

#c97bd9
Original
#6e93dc
Protanopia
#839bd6
Deuteranopia
#cb87a0
Tritanopia
#929292
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).
Failon White
2.87:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon Black
7.32:1

Wide gamut

Display P3 representation

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.

sRGB hex
sRGB hex
##C97BD9
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7455 0.4966 0.8301)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.156

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

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