Frank Taro
Frank Taro (#F3A9EE) 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 (304°, 76%, 81%) places it in the highly saturated band at a light lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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
From the Old French franc, free, sincere — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as direct and unhedged. Frank red, frank brown: moderate-to-high saturation combined with optical directness. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside direct and honest.
Asian-Pacific Colocasia esculenta — a tropical Araceae root crop cultivated for its starchy corm, with deep-violet purple-flesh cultivars (the bun long and Lehua maoli taro) used for poi and ube-style purple desserts. Taro color refers to a freshly cut Colocasia esculenta purple-flesh corm: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the matte finish of anthocyanin-rich starchy taro-pulp. The Polynesian name taro spread to English.
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.