Fuchsia (, ) is a vivid pinkish-purplish-

red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondar ...

color Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are assoc ...

, named after the color of the

flower A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechani ...

of the

fuchsia ''Fuchsia'' () is a genus of flowering plants that consists mostly of shrubs or small trees. The first to be scientifically described, ''Fuchsia triphylla'', was discovered on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) ...

plant, which was named by a French botanist, Charles Plumier, after the 16th-century German botanist Leonhart Fuchs. The color fuchsia was first introduced as the color of a new

aniline dye Aniline is an organic compound with the formula C6 H5 NH2. Consisting of a phenyl group attached to an amino group, aniline is the simplest aromatic amine. It is an industrially significant commodity chemical, as well as a versatile starting m ...

called

fuchsine Fuchsine (sometimes spelled fuchsin) or rosaniline hydrochloride is a magenta dye with chemical formula C20H19N3·HCl.

, patented in 1859 by the French chemist François-Emmanuel Verguin. The dye was renamed

magenta Magenta () is a color that is variously defined as pinkish- purplish- red, reddish-purplish-pink or mauvish-crimson. On color wheels of the RGB (additive) and CMY (subtractive) color models, it is located exactly midway between red and blu ...

later in the same year, to celebrate a victory of the French army at the

Battle of Magenta The Battle of Magenta was fought on 4 June 1859 during the Second Italian War of Independence, resulting in a French-Sardinian victory under Napoleon III against the Austrians under Marshal Ferencz Gyulai. It took place near the town of Magent ...

on 4 June 1859 near the Italian city of that name. The first recorded use of ''fuchsia'' as a color name in English was in 1892.

In web colors

web colors Web colors are colors used in displaying web pages on the World Wide Web, and the methods for describing and specifying those colors. Colors may be specified as an RGB triplet or in hexadecimal format (a ''hex triplet'') or according to their ...

, fuchsia and magenta are exactly the same color, made by mixing blue and red light at full and equal intensity.

In print and design

In color printing and design, there are more variations between magenta and fuchsia. Fuchsia is usually a more pinkish-purplish color, whereas magenta is more reddish. Fuchsia flowers themselves contain a wide variety of purples.

Fuchsine

The first synthetic dye of the color fuchsia, called fuchsine, was patented in 1859 by François-Emmanuel Verguin. It was later renamed

, and became highly popular under that name. File:Basic Fuchsine in aqueous solution.jpg, A sample of fuchsine dye in an aqueous solution File:Basic Fuchsine Crystals.JPG, Crystals of fuchsine dye and the color they produce

Fuchsia (web color)

, isccname=Vivid purple In the system of

additive colors Additive color or additive mixing is a property of a color model that predicts the appearance of colors made by coincident component lights, i.e. the perceived color can be predicted by summing the numeric representations of the component colo ...

, the RGB color model used to create all the colors on a computer or television display, the colors magenta and fuchsia are exactly the same, and have the same hex number, #FF00FF. The name fuchsia is used on the

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

web color list for this color, while the name

is used on the

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

web color list. They are both composed the same way, by combining an equal amount of blue and red light at full brightness, as shown in the image on the left.

Variations of fuchsia

French fuchsia

At right is displayed the color French fuchsia, which is the tone of fuchsia called ''fuchsia'' in a color list popular in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

Fuchsia rose

Fuchsia rose is the

that was chosen as the 2001 Pantone color of the year by

Pantone Pantone LLC (stylized as PANTONE) is a limited liability company headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey. The company is best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, notably graphi ...

Red-purple

Red-purple is the color that is called ''Rojo-Púrpura'' (the

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

word for "red-purple") in the ''Guía de coloraciones'' (''Guide to colorations'') by Rosa Gallego and Juan Carlos Sanz, a color dictionary published in 2005 that is widely popular in the Hispanophone realm. Although ''red-purple'' is a seldom-used color name in English, in Spanish it is regarded one of the major tones of

purple Purple is any of a variety of colors with hue between red and blue. In the RGB color model used in computer and television screens, purples are produced by mixing red and blue light. In the RYB color model historically used by painters, ...

Fuchsia purple

The color fuchsia purple is displayed at right. The source of this color is the "Pantone Textile Paper eXtended (TPX)" color list, color #18-2436 TPX—Fuchsia Purple.

Deep fuchsia

Deep fuchsia is the color that is called ''fuchsia'' in the List of Crayola crayon colors.

Fandango

Displayed at right is the color fandango. The first recorded use of ''fandango'' as a color name in English was in 1925.

Antique fuchsia

Displayed at right is the color antique fuchsia. The first recorded use of ''antique fuchsia'' as a color name in English was in 1928. The source of this color is the ''Plochere Color System'', a color system formulated in 1948 that is widely used by

interior designer Interior design is the art and science of enhancing the interior of a building to achieve a healthier and more aesthetically pleasing environment for the people using the space. An interior designer is someone who plans, researches, coordina ...

s.Plochere Color System:

Crayola color fuchsia

In 1949, the color names of Crayola crayons were reformed and became more scientific, more of the names of the colors of the crayons being based on the names of colors in the original 1930 edition of the ''Dictionary of Color'' and the color names of the

Munsell color system In colorimetry, the Munsell color system is a color space that specifies colors based on three properties of color: hue (basic color), chroma (color intensity), and value (lightness). It was created by Professor Albert H. Munsell in the firs ...

. Crayola crayons set up a color naming system similar to that used in the Munsell Color Wheel, except that

violet Violet may refer to: Common meanings * Violet (color), a spectral color with wavelengths shorter than blue * One of a list of plants known as violet, particularly: ** ''Viola'' (plant), a genus of flowering plants Places United States * Viol ...

instead of

was used as the secondary color on the

color wheel A color wheel or color circle is an abstract illustrative organization of color hues around a circle, which shows the relationships between primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors etc. Some sources use the terms ''color wheel'' ...

between red and blue. The web color fuchsia is equivalent to the pure chroma on Munsell Color Wheel of the Munsell color system that is designated as "5RP" (''reddish purple'') i.e., a purple that is shaded toward

(the color we can achieve today with computers is a much more saturated pure color wheel chroma hue than the original color chip shown on the Munsell color wheel diagram in the Munsell color system article). In 1972, a new Crayola crayon color was introduced called ''hot magenta'' which is the closest equivalent to the web color fuchsia in Crayola crayons. (See List of Crayola crayon colors.) The color shown in the color box above is the color called "Fuchsia" in ''A Dictionary of Color''. That is why the name fuchsia was chosen as the equivalent to one of the three secondary additive primary colors, electric

, because ''A Dictionary of Color'' was the primary reference on color names (besides the ''Munsell Book of Color'') before the introduction of

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

s. The color shown above is somewhat brighter than most actual flowers of the fuchsia plant. The color shown as magenta in ''A Dictionary of Color'' is a somewhat different color than the color shown in that book as fuchsia—it is the original color magenta now called ''rich magenta'' or ''magenta (dye)'' (see the article on magenta for a color box displaying a sample of this original magenta).

References

*Philip Ball (2001), ''Bright Earth, Art and the Invention of Colour'', Penguin Group, . (ISBN and page numbers are from the French translation).

Notes and citations

{{Color topics Shades of magenta Shades of red Shades of pink Shades of violet Web colors