The Dictionary of
Color Combinations

purple · 4 palettes

Lilac

About Lilac

Lilac is a mid-tone, muted purple tone. Its hex value is #b984af — that is RGB 185, 132, 175, or HSL 311°, 27%, 62%.

It holds 7.0:1 contrast against dark, so Lilac works best for body text, headings, and UI labels. (On white it scores 3.0:1; on black 7.0:1.)

Across Sanzo Wada's 1933 Dictionary of Color Combinations, Lilac appears in 4 combinations — most often paired with Blue, Warm Gray and Old Rose.

Palettes with Lilac

Lilac appears in 4 combinations from the archive. Each pairing reveals how the same color shifts character depending on its neighbours.

Embed this color

Drop a Lilac swatch card into any blog post, design review, or color-study reference page. Links back to this color's detail.

<iframe src="https://colorcombinations.org/embed/colors/lilac/" width="360" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border-radius:8px;overflow:hidden;" title="Lilac — colorcombinations.org"></iframe>

Preview

From the archive

Support the archive The full catalog, on your disk, as a thank-you.

  • All 378 palettes (348 Wada + 30 editorial) in five formats
  • Figma design tokens (W3C-spec JSON, drag into any file)
  • Tailwind v4 + v3 configs — drop into any project
  • CSS custom properties — every plate, one stylesheet
  • 378 museum SVG plates — print-ready at any size
  • Full JSON — colors, names, eras, moods, dominant hues
See what's inside

Launching soon. The free archive stays free, always.