Purples - Purple Vs. Violet

Purple Vs. Violet

In the traditional color wheel used by painters, violet and purple are both placed between red and blue. Purple occupies the space closer to red, between crimson and violet. Violet is closer to blue, and is usually less intense and bright than purple.

While the two colors look similar, from the point of view of optics there are important differences. Violet is a spectral, or real color – it occupies its own place at the end of the spectrum of light, and it has its own wavelength (approximately 380–420 nm). It was one of the colors of the spectrum first identified by Isaac Newton in 1672, whereas purple is simply a combination of two colors, red and blue. There is no such thing as the "wavelength of purple light"; it only exists as a combination.

Pure violet cannot be accurately reproduced by the Red-Green-Blue (RGB) color system, the method used to create colors on a television screen or computer display. It is approximated by mixing blue light at high intensity with less intense red light on a black screen. The resulting color has the same hue but a lower saturation than pure violet.

One curious psychophysical difference between purple and violet is their appearance with an increase of light intensity. Violet, as it brightens, looks more and more blue. The same effect does not happen with purple. This is the result of what is known as the Bezold-Brücke shift.

While the scientific definitions of violet and purple are clear, the cultural definitions are more varied. The color known in antiquity as Tyrian purple ranged from crimson to a deep bluish-purple, depending upon how it was made. The color called purple by the French, pourpre, contains more red and half the amount of blue of the color called purple in the United States and the U.K. In German, this color is sometimes called Purpurrot ("purple-red") to avoid confusion.

• The color violet

• the color purple

• In the traditional Boutet color circle (1708), purple is shown between crimson and violet.

• The French call this background color "pourpre," or purple. French and German purple contains more red and less blue than American or British purple.