Shades of purple
02 Feb 2007Have you ever gotten into a discussion with a woman on colors? It seems that, while some people have ‘absolute hearing’ (pinpoint any frequency to the right note), there is also a kind of ‘absolute color perception’, and women seem more often blessed with it. While us men have the habit of calling anything with a red/blue mix ‘purple’, life is actually not that simple. There are many shades of purple: violet, mauve, orchid and half a dozen variations on those.
To make things even more difficult for Belgian men: we actually have two words in Dutch: ‘paars‘ is the equivalent of ‘purple’ in English, while ‘purper‘ is more like magenta. Ask any man here (that’s not a fashion designer or hairdresser) the difference between ‘purper’ and ‘paars’ and you’ll get utter astonishment.
So here’s a reference chart of the shades of purple I found in the HTML color list:
| #5A004A | Tokyo Purple |
| #660099 | Vulgar Purple (paars) |
| #800080 | (Royal) Purple (purper) |
| #8A2BE2 | Blue violet |
| #8B008B | Dark magenta |
| #9370DB | Medium purple |
| #9400D3 | Dark violet |
| #990066 | Aubergine / Eggplant |
| #9932CC | Dark orchid |
| #A020F0 | Purple (X11 color) |
| #B12166 | Pansy purple |
| #BA55D3 | Medium orchid |
| #BF00FF | Electric purple |
| #C71585 | Medium violet red |
| #DA70D6 | Orchid (Orchidee) |
| #DB7093 | Pale violet red |
| #DD00FF | Psychedelic Purple |
| #E0B0FF | Mauve |
| #E6E6FA | Lavender (Lavendel) |
| #EE82EE | Violet |
| #FF00FF | Fuchsia |
If any woman/color-sensitive man would like to point out more variations of purple-ish colours, be my guest!
By the way: purple is the color for Saturday, according to Ayurveda weekday colors
