Home Color Guides What Colors Make Purple
Purple is the odd one out on the color wheel: it has no wavelength of its own. Red and blue make it in paint, magenta and blue make it brighter, and white or black turn it into lavender or aubergine. Every swatch below is the computed blend, so you can see exactly where each route lands before you squeeze a tube.
#8c53a2 Ratio 1 : 1 · 50 / 50
Blend path between your colors
color-mix(in oklab, #ff0000 50%, #0000ff) Unlike red, green, or blue, purple is not a color your screen can emit as a single channel — and it is not a wavelength your eye sees on its own either. Purple lives in the gap between the red end and blue end of the spectrum, which is why it only exists as a mixture. That makes it the classic school answer (red and blue) and, in practice, the classic disappointment: the mixed paint often comes out grayer and darker than expected.
The reason is subtraction. Red pigment absorbs most blue light, and blue pigment absorbs most red light — so stacking the two leaves only a dim violet leftover. Painters dodge this by swapping red for magenta, a pigment that reflects both red and blue. Same idea, much livelier purple. The routes below show both, with the exact landing spot for each.
Every result below is computed in a perceptual color space: the swatch is the blend your eye sees, with the HEX code next to it. Click any code to copy it.
The classic: equal parts red and blue land on a muted, true purple.
This is the answer everyone learns, and it works — but notice the result is duskier than the purple in your head. Red absorbs blue and blue absorbs red, so the mix arrives pre-dimmed. Fine for most jobs; the next route is the fix when you want fireworks.
Swap red for magenta and the same mix turns electric.
Magenta is a printer's primary — it reflects red and blue light instead of eating half of it. In paint terms this is quinacridone magenta plus ultramarine, the standard recipe for a clean royal purple. Whenever a red-and-blue mix disappoints, this is the upgrade.
Twice as much blue as red pushes the mix toward blue-violet and indigo.
Violet is simply purple with extra blue in it. This is the lane for iris, lavender-leaning blues, and the deep end of dusk skies. In paint, adding a touch of ultramarine to your purple does the same job.
Flip the ratio and the mix warms up into plum and wine territory.
Extra red slides the blend toward red-violet: plum, wine, magenta-leaning purple. This is the family that reads cozy instead of cool, and it is also where pink-tinted purples like fuchsia begin.
Darken finished purple with a quarter-share of black for aubergine.
The most predictable way to reach deep eggplant and aubergine. Add black a finger at a time — purple darkens fast at the end and there is no un-mixing it. For the opposite direction, white does the job: see the lavender FAQ below.
Red and blue — that is the classic answer, and the equal-parts blend lands on a muted violet. The cleaner mix is magenta plus blue, because magenta reflects both red and blue light instead of absorbing half of it. Lean blue for violet, lean red for plum.
Two ways: add more blue to the mix (deepens and cools it), or shade finished purple with a small amount of black, which gives aubergine and eggplant. Go slowly — purple darkens quickly in the last stretch of either route.
Add white. Lavender, lilac and periwinkle are tints of purple: roughly one part white to four parts purple already reads lavender, and more white walks it toward lilac. In buttercream or icing the white base does this automatically.
Almost always the red's fault. Reds with a yellow bias (cadmium, vermilion) carry the one color into the mix that kills purple. Switch to magenta or a rose red, and rinse the brush — trace yellow from earlier mixing does the same damage.
In everyday use they are interchangeable. Strictly, violet is the bluer member of the family — closer to indigo — while purple leans red toward plum and magenta. Artists use violet for blue-leaning mixes and purple for red-leaning ones; the two ratio routes above show the difference side by side.