Magenta Affair

#aa44dd

A magenta 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

#aa44dd

RGB

170, 68, 221

OKLCh

59.2% 0.228 312.0°

CIELAB (D50)

48.8, 59.7, -60.5

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • One other named colour sits within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses 77% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 71.0; on black, Lc -30.7. 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 17.8 and 17.7 and 70.6 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

4.59:1 — passes AA

Black text

4.58:1 — passes AA

White text is the better of the two at4.59:1. That is enough for body text.

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#aa44dd

protanopia

#5858dd · ΔE00 17.8

deuteranopia

#6f6fdc · ΔE00 17.7

tritanopia

#838300 · ΔE00 70.6

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isPurple Yam at ΔE00 0.871: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Purple YamΔE00 0.871 · #a846d7
  • Pisces Vivid AmethystΔE00 2.373 · #ab46ec
  • Sweet DesireΔE00 3.226 · #aa33ee
  • Lightish PurpleΔE00 3.451 · #a552e6
  • Ultraviolet OnsibleΔE00 3.707 · #bb44dd
  • Eupatorium PurpleΔE00 3.952 · #bf36e0
  • Shades of RhodoniteΔE00 4.094 · #be2bdf
  • Morado PurpleΔE00 4.313 · #9955cc
  • Ripe LavanderΔE00 4.467 · #a259ce
  • Promiscuous PinkΔE00 4.595 · #bb11ee
  • Light Shōtoku PurpleΔE00 4.697 · #aa55ee
  • Chaste BlossomsΔE00 4.976 · #9944ee

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