Shades of purple

Have 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

💬 color