Heartening Strobilanthes
Heartening Strobilanthes (#FDAFEE) 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 (312°, 95%, 84%) 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
Old English heorte (heart) — present-participle of hearten. As a color modifier, heartening implies a clear-and-uplifting-and-encouraging quality where the hue carries the visual register of cheerful-encouraging color-tone. Sits at the crisp-and-cheerful end of the grid, parallel to welcoming and cheerful in usage.
Asian Persian shield (Strobilanthes dyerianus) — a Burmese-native evergreen shrub cultivated worldwide for its iridescent violet-and-silver leaf coloration. Strobilanthes color refers to a Strobilanthes dyerianus leaf upper surface in raking light: a saturated, slightly cool deep violet with the iridescent satin finish of structurally colored cuticular leaf surface. The genus name comes from the Greek stróbilos (cone) and anthos (flower).
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.