Space Opera

#5511dd

A violet that is about as vivid as sRGB can show at this lightness. It is mid — the hardest range to put text on, either colour struggles.

Hex

#5511dd

RGB

85, 17, 221

OKLCh

45.6% 0.259 284.1°

CIELAB (D50)

31.4, 61.9, -89.6

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 2 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses 97% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue — close enough to the boundary that a wider display would show it slightly more vividly.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 86.8; on black, Lc -15.3. The sign is the polarity, which the WCAG ratio discards.
  • Built into an eleven-step scale, 10 of the 10 adjacent pairs stay ΔE00 2 apart — see the ramp.
  • protanopia and deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 5.6 and 6.5 and 9.3 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

8.36:1 — passes AA

Black text

2.51:1 — fails AA

White text is the better of the two at8.36:1. That is enough for body text.

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#5511dd

protanopia

#2121dd · ΔE00 5.6

deuteranopia

#3131dd · ΔE00 6.5

tritanopia

#3e3eb6 · ΔE00 9.3

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isGonzo Violet at ΔE00 1.682: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.

  • Gonzo VioletΔE00 1.682 · #5d06e9
  • Tezcatlipōca BlueΔE00 1.776 · #5500ee
  • Wèi Lán AzureΔE00 2.067 · #5a06ef
  • Sea Serpent’s TearsΔE00 2.111 · #5511cc
  • Blue Copper OreΔE00 2.144 · #4411dd
  • Nasu PurpleΔE00 2.295 · #5d21d0
  • Poseidon’s TerritoryΔE00 2.567 · #4400ee
  • Royal Hunter BlueΔE00 2.695 · #4411ee
  • Violet BlueΔE00 2.802 · #510ac9
  • Blue PurpleΔE00 2.921 · #5729ce
  • Purple BlueΔE00 3.623 · #661aee
  • Radiant FeatherΔE00 3.631 · #5500ff

11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.