Smooth Damson
Smooth Damson (#EDBCF4) is a soft violet with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (293°, 72%, 85%) places it in the balanced band at a light lightness. It works as a background wash, large-area fill, or soft illustration tone. Add a darker ink of the same hue when you need type over it. 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
Old English smōþ, level, polished — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as continuous without texture or break. Smooth tan, smooth gray: moderate saturation combined with optical evenness. Sits in the crisp-bucket alongside even.
Prunus domestica subsp. insititia, the small dark plum of European orchards — too tart to eat fresh but unmatched for jam, gin-flavoring, and English plum pudding. Named for Damascus, the city through which it spread westward in antiquity. The color refers to a ripe damson on the tree: a deep, slightly red-shifted purple-black with the heavy bloom of waxy fruit surface. Deeper than plum, cooler than wine.
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.