Skip to main content

Pale Violet Red

#DB7093·pink family·WCAG AA

Tints & Shades

50

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

Scale from white (50) through Pale Violet Red (500) to black (900), interpolated in Lab color space.

Color Values

HEX
#DB7093
RGB
rgb(219, 112, 147)
HSL
hsl(340, 60%, 65%)
OKLCH
oklch(0.678 0.138 1)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 49%, 33%, 14%)
Luminance:0.2875
CSS var:--color-palevioletred
Tailwind:bg-[#DB7093]

Accessibility

Score: 31/100

On White (#FFF)

3.11:1

AA Large

On Black (#000)

6.75:1

AA

On Light Gray (#F5F5F5)

2.85:1

Fail

Best text color on this background:

black6.75:1
Open in Contrast Checker →

Design Applications

Background

background-color: #DB7093

Text Color

color: #DB7093

bg-[#DB7093] text-[#000000]

Accent border card component

border-left: 4px solid #DB7093

Color Meaning & Psychology

Pink is a tint of red with fundamentally different psychological properties. Where red signals danger, pink signals tenderness and safety. Pink creates calming effects — experiments show pink holding cells reduce aggressive behavior. In branding, hot pinks and magentas are energetic and attention-grabbing; blush pinks feel intimate and soft; dusty pinks convey a sophisticated, vintage femininity. Pink's gender coding (a 20th-century convention) has made it culturally complex — contemporary brands use pink to challenge norms as much as to reinforce them. In luxury markets, pink signals romance and intimacy rather than power. Its lighter value makes it approachable and soft — suitable for backgrounds, secondary UI states, and contexts requiring the hue's character without full intensity.

Industry Usage

Common contexts and industries where Pale Violet Red is applied in professional design.

  • Beauty, cosmetics, and personal care
  • Baby products and nursery design
  • Romantic occasions and greeting cards
  • Confectionery and dessert brands
  • Fashion and lifestyle brands targeting millennial audiences
  • Social media apps emphasizing intimacy
  • Breast cancer awareness campaigns
  • Toy brands and children's entertainment

Accessibility Considerations

Normal Text

Fails AA

4.5:1 minimum required

Large Text

Passes AA Large

3:1 minimum required

UI Components

Meets 1.4.11

3:1 for non-text UI

Pale Violet Red is a light color. Use black (#000000) text on top of it for maximum readability (6.75:1). Avoid white text on this background.

CSS & Code Examples

Background

background-color: #DB7093;

Text

color: #DB7093;

Border

border: 2px solid #DB7093;

Box Shadow

box-shadow: 0 4px 20px #DB709340;

Gradient

background: linear-gradient(135deg, #DB7093, #ffa1c3);

Tailwind-style

--color-pale-violet-red: #DB7093;

Tailwind CSS Utilities

Use arbitrary value syntax in Tailwind CSS to apply Pale Violet Red without a custom config.

Background

bg-[#DB7093]

Text

text-[#DB7093]

Border

border-[#DB7093]

Ring

ring-[#DB7093]

Fill

fill-[#DB7093]

From (gradient)

from-[#DB7093]

Via (gradient)

via-[#DB7093]

To (gradient)

to-[#DB7093]

Design Tokens

Ready-to-use Pale Violet Red design token in CSS custom properties, SCSS, Tailwind v3/v4, and JSON formats.

CSS Custom Properties

:root {
  --color-palevioletred: #DB7093;
  --color-palevioletred-rgb: 219, 112, 147;
  --color-palevioletred-hsl: 340, 60%, 65%;
}

SCSS Variables

$color-palevioletred: #DB7093;
$color-palevioletred-rgb: 219, 112, 147;
$color-palevioletred-hsl: 340, 60%, 65%;

Tailwind v3 Config

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      colors: {
        'palevioletred': '#DB7093',
      },
    },
  },
};

Tailwind v4 (@theme)

/* tailwind.css */
@theme {
  --color-palevioletred: #DB7093;
}

JSON Design Token (W3C format)

{
  "palevioletred": {
    "value": "#DB7093",
    "type": "color",
    "description": "Pale Violet Red — #DB7093"
  }
}

What Does Pale Violet Red Mean? Color Psychology & Cultural Symbolism

Color psychology research shows pink generally reduces aggression and increases warmth perceptions, but the family's range from whisper-soft blush to neon fuchsia means the specific tone matters enormously. At #DB7093, Pale Violet Red lands in playfulness territory—the variant of pink that best serves beauty packaging.

  • Across color psychology research, pink consistently tests high for "joy" associations, making Pale Violet Red a reliable vehicle for playfulness in cross-demographic audiences.
  • Brand designers draw on pink-family tones to project creativity and confidence—values that Pale Violet Red communicates in a mid-tone key.
  • At 60% saturation, Pale Violet Red reads as moderately saturated—neither overwhelming nor passive, landing in the warmth, playfulness, optimism, and modern confidence zone with measured confidence.
  • Pale Violet Red's mid-tone lightness (65%) shifts its psychological register: a balanced mid-tone that embodies warmth, playfulness, optimism, and modern confidence at its most direct.

The brands that use Pale Violet Red well are the ones that understand what they're communicating beyond gender—warmth, creativity, and the willingness to be joyful.

How to Use Pale Violet Red in Design: Applications, Pairings & Best Practices

The art of using Pale Violet Red effectively is understanding which conversation you're joining. Soft and blush, or bold and confident—the same hue family communicates very differently at different saturations and lightnesses.

  • Avoid: industries requiring seriousness or authority (finance, legal, government) unless used as a calculated subversion, and technology products targeting broad professional audiences without a specific cultural reason.
  • Color harmonies: Pale Violet Red's complementary color creates a high-energy split ideal for promotional design; its analogous palette (±30° hue) builds cohesive, monochromatic sophistication.
  • Proportional use: Pale Violet Red's moderately saturated quality means it scales well across proportions—from full-bleed backgrounds to single-pixel borders—making it an unusually versatile palette component.
  • Pale Violet Red creates strong legibility with black text overlays (6.8:1 contrast ratio), making it a reliable background or surface color in design systems
  • Typography: Pale Violet Red as text requires a dark background; its 65% lightness means it provides 3.1:1 contrast on white, not meeting WCAG AA.

The brands that use Pale Violet Red well are the ones that understand what they're communicating beyond gender—warmth, creativity, and the willingness to be joyful.

Pale Violet Red Accessibility: WCAG Contrast Ratios, Color Blindness & Inclusive Design

Pale Violet Red (#DB7093) reaches 6.75:1 contrast with black text—meeting WCAG 2.1 AA minimum of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. It clears standard production accessibility requirements. Relative luminance: 28.7%.

  • As text on white (#FFFFFF): 3.11:1 — AA (large text only)
  • As text on black (#000000): 6.75:1 — AA ✓
  • Best text color on Pale Violet Red background: Black (#000000) at 6.75:1
  • WCAG 2.1 luminance: 28.7% — mid-range luminance—it sits in the transition zone where both dark and light text approaches require testing against the 4.5:1 WCAG threshold
  • Pale Violet Red qualifies for normal body text and all larger sizes (AA).
  • Color blindness consideration: protanopia and deuteranopia (red-green color blindness, ~8% of males) may affect how pink-family colors are distinguished from greens and browns. For critical UI states, supplement color alone with shape, label, or pattern cues.

For production use, test Pale Violet Red against your specific background colors rather than assuming #FFFFFF or #000000 performance translates. Surrounding colors alter perceived contrast.

Pale Violet Red in Industry: Branding, Design & Market Applications

Pale Violet Red (#DB7093) is most at home in industries where warmth, playfulness, optimism, and modern confidence are key brand values. Its mid-tone quality makes it particularly effective in Beauty & Personal Care contexts, where the moderately saturated saturation signals optimism at exactly the right register.

  • Beauty & Personal Care: Pink remains a dominant force in beauty despite its expanded semantic range. It signals femininity, self-care, and the small luxuries of personal grooming—and it works across the tonal range from bold fuchsia packaging to soft blush product photography. Gender-neutral beauty brands increasingly use specific pink tones (dusty rose, millennial pink) to retain warmth while avoiding overtly gendered associations.
  • Food & Confectionery: Pink signals sweetness, freshness, and delight in food contexts. Dessert brands, bakeries, and confectioneries use it to trigger sweet-taste associations and create an atmosphere of celebratory indulgence. Particularly effective for Valentine's Day, birthday, and celebration-focused food products.
  • Fashion & Lifestyle: Fashion's relationship with pink is dynamic—it cycles between softness and statement power depending on cultural moment. Currently, fashion uses pink most boldly as a color of confidence, irony, and self-aware femininity. Bold fuchsia and hot pink are more culturally resonant in fashion right now than blush; the trend trajectory matters as much as the hue.
  • Brand positioning: Pale Violet Red is best suited for brands projecting joy, playfulness, warmth. Categories outside this positioning—industries requiring seriousness or authority (finance—tend to see weaker results.
  • Adjacent applications: Beyond primary industries, Pale Violet Red works effectively in beauty packaging, confectionery and dessert brands, celebratory occasions—contexts where optimism serves a secondary but reinforcing role.

The industries where Pale Violet Red performs best are those where the audience expects optimism. Build brand strategy around this alignment, not against it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the hex code for Pale Violet Red?
The hex code for Pale Violet Red is #DB7093. Its RGB values are rgb(219, 112, 147) and its HSL values are hsl(340, 60%, 65%).
What does Pale Violet Red mean in design?
Pink is a tint of red with fundamentally different psychological properties. Where red signals danger, pink signals tenderness and safety. Pink creates calming effects — experiments show pink holding cells reduce aggressive behavior. In branding, hot pinks and magentas are energetic and attention-grabbing; blush pinks feel intimate and soft; dusty pinks convey a sophisticated, vintage femininity. Pink's gender coding (a 20th-century convention) has made it culturally complex — contemporary brands use pink to challenge norms as much as to reinforce them. In luxury markets, pink signals romance and intimacy rather than power. Its lighter value makes it approachable and soft — suitable for backgrounds, secondary UI states, and contexts requiring the hue's character without full intensity.
Is Pale Violet Red WCAG accessible?
Pale Violet Red (#DB7093) passes WCAG AA-large on white with a 3.11:1 contrast ratio. Its overall accessibility score is 31/100.
What colors go well with Pale Violet Red?
Pale Violet Red pairs well with its complementary color Eucalyptus (#44D7A8). Analogous colors like Byzantium and Classic Rose also work harmoniously. Check the Color Harmonies section above for the full palette.
What is Pale Violet Red used for?
Pale Violet Red is commonly used for: Beauty, cosmetics, and personal care; Baby products and nursery design; Romantic occasions and greeting cards; Confectionery and dessert brands; Fashion and lifestyle brands targeting millennial audiences.
What are the CSS and Tailwind values for Pale Violet Red?
In CSS, use `color: #DB7093` or `background-color: #DB7093`. The CSS custom property is `--color-palevioletred: #DB7093`. In Tailwind CSS, use the arbitrary value class `bg-[#DB7093]` for backgrounds or `text-[#DB7093]` for text.