Purple Illusion
#b8b8f8
A violet that is muted. It is very light — it works as a page background, not as text.
Hex
#b8b8f8
RGB
184, 184, 248
OKLCh
80.5% 0.090 284.2°
CIELAB (D50)
76.5, 10.3, -31.9
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 2 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses 89% 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 35.3; on black, Lc -67.3. 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.
- All three dichromacies see it as very nearly the same colour you do: its hue is not the part carrying its identity.
Text on this colour
White text
1.87:1 — fails AA
Black text
11.25:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at11.25:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#7271ac 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
#b8b8f8
protanopia
#b8b8f8 · ΔE00 0.0
deuteranopia
#b8b8f8 · ΔE00 0.0
tritanopia
#b8b8f8 · ΔE00 0.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isDried Lilac at ΔE00 1.136: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- Dried LilacΔE00 1.136 · #bbbbff
- Greyish LavenderΔE00 1.318 · #b8b8ff
- Winterspring LilacΔE00 2.913 · #b5afff
- Light PeriwinkleΔE00 3.519 · #c1c6fc
- Maximum Blue PurpleΔE00 3.549 · #acace6
- PeranoΔE00 3.618 · #acb9e8
- Larkspur BudΔE00 4.018 · #b7c0ea
- VodkaΔE00 4.104 · #bfc0ee
- French Lilac BlueΔE00 4.338 · #adbae3
- Sassy VioletΔE00 4.783 · #acb5dc
- Spoiled RottenΔE00 4.789 · #b6bfe5
- Lavender TonicΔE00 4.893 · #ccbbff
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.