Somewhere in a Fairytale

#cc99dd

A magenta that is muted. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.

Hex

#cc99dd

RGB

204, 153, 221

OKLCh

75.4% 0.110 317.5°

CIELAB (D50)

69.9, 28.4, -27.1

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • No other named colour in the set is within ΔE00 2 of it — it stands alone.
  • It uses 56% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 45.1; on black, Lc -57.0. 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 13.6 and 12.8 and 60.5 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.29:1 — fails AA

Black text

9.17:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at9.17:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#9565a5 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.

Try it against your own background

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#cc99dd

protanopia

#a0a0dd · ΔE00 13.6

deuteranopia

#aaaadc · ΔE00 12.8

tritanopia

#b5b500 · ΔE00 60.5

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isBright Ube at ΔE00 2.161: between 2 and 5 — clearly two colours when compared, easily mistaken from memory. What the numbers mean.

  • Bright UbeΔE00 2.161 · #d19fe8
  • Silver RustΔE00 2.335 · #c9a0df
  • Autumn WisteriaΔE00 2.399 · #c9a0dc
  • Mauve MistΔE00 2.522 · #c49bd4
  • Spring WisteriaΔE00 3.201 · #cda4de
  • Tropical VioletΔE00 3.434 · #cda5df
  • Amethyst ShowΔE00 3.48 · #bd97cf
  • Dream VapourΔE00 3.9 · #cc99ee
  • Herb RobertΔE00 4.088 · #dda0df
  • LenurpleΔE00 4.098 · #ba93d8
  • Ineffable MagentaΔE00 4.381 · #cc99cc
  • Damson PlumΔE00 4.393 · #dda0dd

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