Candid Fittonia
Candid Fittonia (#FAAAD7) is a soft magenta with a pastel character. It reads calm and airy, with enough chroma to feel intentional rather than washed out. Its HSL profile (326°, 89%, 82%) 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 teal. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin candidus, bright-white / honest — derived from candēre (to shine). As a color modifier, candid implies a clear-and-honest-and-direct quality where the hue carries the visual register of straightforward-honest declaration. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to frank and plainspoken in usage.
South American nerve plant (Fittonia albivenis) — an Acanthaceae understory creeper native to the Peruvian Amazon whose deep-magenta-veined silver-green foliage is cultivated worldwide as a terrarium plant. Fittonia color refers to a Fittonia albivenis leaf upper-surface in raking light: a saturated, slightly cool deep magenta with the velvet finish of anthocyanin-pigmented vein network against a pale silver-green leaf-tissue background.
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.