Pastel Purple
#b39eb5
A magenta that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.
Hex
#b39eb5
RGB
179, 158, 181
OKLCh
72.5% 0.040 323.3°
CIELAB (D50)
67.5, 11.1, -9.0
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 3 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 16% of the chroma available at this lightness and hue — there is a far more vivid version of this colour inside sRGB.
- As text on white it measures APCA Lc 48.7; on black, Lc -53.3. 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 9.1 and 9.4 and 35.3 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
2.48:1 — fails AA
Black text
8.47:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at8.47:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#847086 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#b39eb5
protanopia
#a1a1b5 · ΔE00 9.1
deuteranopia
#a5a5b5 · ΔE00 9.4
tritanopia
#a9a967 · ΔE00 35.3
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isVeiled Violet at ΔE00 1.209: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- Veiled VioletΔE00 1.209 · #b19bb0
- SvelteΔE00 1.521 · #b8a3bb
- EmanationΔE00 1.994 · #b4a3bb
- Viola SororiaΔE00 2.067 · #b9a5bd
- Melting MomentΔE00 2.355 · #bba2b6
- Leek Blossom PinkΔE00 2.381 · #bca3b8
- Lilac LustreΔE00 2.629 · #ae98aa
- VelourΔE00 2.646 · #baa7bf
- Fair OrchidΔE00 2.7 · #bda7be
- SymbolicΔE00 2.919 · #b29ead
- Parlour RoseΔE00 2.958 · #baa1b2
- Heliotrope GreyΔE00 2.999 · #ab98a9
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.