Shades of Purple: Hex, RGB, and HSL Codes

What counts as a shade of purple?

Purple sits between blue and red and has no wavelength of its own — the eye constructs it from both ends of the spectrum at once. The 21 shades below start pale with Lavender #E6E6FA, Thistle #D8BFD8, and Lilac #C8A2C8, brighten through Violet #EE82EE, Orchid #DA70D6, and Magenta #FF00FF, and deepen into Royal Purple #7851A9, Purple #800080, and Indigo #4B0082.

The split that matters is red-purple versus blue-purple. Magenta, Orchid, and DarkMagenta #8B008B lean red and feel energetic, almost pink; BlueViolet #8A2BE2, Amethyst #9966CC, and Indigo lean blue and feel cooler and more serious. RebeccaPurple #663399 is the outlier with a story — it was added to the CSS specification in 2014 in memory of the daughter of a web standards contributor, and it is the only named color on this page added for that kind of reason.

How to use these color codes

1. Find your shade. The list runs roughly light to dark, with a live preview beside every name — scan it the way you would a paint chart.
2. Click a code to copy. Each row carries the hex, RGB, and HSL value of that color. One click copies that exact string to your clipboard.
3. Paste it into your project. Drop the hex into CSS, Figma, Photoshop, or a document. Clicking the swatch itself copies the hex, so you can grab colors without aiming at the small text.

What purple communicates

Purple's associations come straight from its cost. Tyrian purple dye was extracted from sea snails in quantities that made it worth more than gold, so for most of recorded history only royalty and the church wore it — the residue of that is why Royal Purple still reads as luxury, ceremony, and premium pricing.

In modern use it splits by lightness. Pale purples — Lavender, Lilac, Mauve #E0B0FF — read as calm, floral, and restorative, and dominate spa, sleep, and beauty branding. Deep saturated purples read as creative and slightly unconventional, which is why they cluster in entertainment, gaming, and brands that want to signal they are not another blue company.

Honest limitations

A hex code is exact, but the color you see is not. The same #FF0000 looks different on an OLED phone, a cheap office monitor, and a printed page, because each device has its own gamut and calibration. Treat these values as a precise starting point for screens, and always check a physical proof before committing a color to print — CMYK cannot reproduce every shade listed here.

Color names are a mix of two things. Entries badged CSS are official CSS named colors: the name itself works in a stylesheet and every browser resolves it to exactly that hex. The rest are conventional names — Burgundy, Sage, Espresso — that no standards body owns. Their hex values follow the most widely cited convention, but another chart may place them a few percent lighter or darker, so quote the hex rather than the name when the exact value matters.

Why is it free?

FreeToGenerate.com keeps every tool genuinely free. This page is a static list of color values rendered in your browser — nothing to install, no account, no premium tier holding back the darker half of the palette. Copy as many codes as you need, as often as you need.

Other color families

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