Lavender (color)

This box shows the color lavender.
 
a lavender flower

Lavender, a popular color, is a light tone of violet.

The name comes from the flower of the lavender plant. Originally, the name lavender only meant the color of this flower. The color of the flower is still the standard for lavender but there are many other tones of light or medium violet now called lavender also.

The color of the flower can also be called floral lavender. Other shades of lavender can range in hue from pinkish purple through violet to blueish-indigo. They can also range from light and pale to medium and greyish shades.

By 1930, the book A Dictionary of Color identified three major tones of lavender--[floral] lavender, lavender gray, and lavender blue, and in addition a fourth tone of lavender called old lavender (a dark lavender gray) (all four of these shades of lavender are shown below). By 1955, the ISCC-NBS Dictionary of Color Names listed dozens of different shades of lavender.

The first recorded use of the word lavender as a color term in English was in 1705.

Meaning of lavender

Tones of Lavender color comparison chart

Lavender (web color)

This box shows the color lavender.
 

References

  1. ↑ Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill
  2. ↑ ISCC-NBS Dictionary of Color Names (1955)--color dictionary used by stamp collectors to identify the colors of stamps--See various shades of the color Lavender displayed on indicated page: Archived 2017-08-22 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ↑ Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York: 1930 McGraw-Hill Page 197