Periwinkle Color: History, Facts & How to Mix It

What color is periwinkle?

Full strength

Diluted

Pale wash

Graded wash

Hex	#CCCCFF
RGB	204, 204, 255
CMYK	20, 20, 0, 0
Warm or cool	Cool. It carries almost no red, less than lavender and far less than mauve, which is what keeps it reading as blue rather than violet despite the name.
On the wheel	A pale blue-violet that sits right on the line between the two families. Numerically it is a plain, slightly desaturated blue; the eye reads the extra lightness as violet.

The story of periwinkle

Periwinkle is a flower, a sea snail and a color, and the snail is the odd one out.

The flower comes first, and it is named for what it does, not what it looks like. Vinca, the genus, comes from the Latin vincire, to bind or fetter; the plant trails along the ground on long stems that root as they go, binding one patch of earth to the next. English took a different route to the same idea. Periwinkle grew out of Old English pervince, from the Late Latin pervinca, built from that same sense of entwining things thoroughly. The flowers themselves are small violet-blue trumpets, five petals fused at the base, low to the ground and easy to miss until you are already standing in a patch of them.

A botanical print of a periwinkle plant with trailing leafy stems, small blue five petaled flowers, and a tangle of roots at its base — *Periwinkle (Vinca sp.)*, hand-colored etching by M. Bouchard, published in Rome, 1772. Labeled Pervinca vulgaris in Latin and Pervenche in French. The trailing stems and tangled roots are exactly what the Latin vincire, to bind, was describing. Wellcome Collection, public domain.

Then there is the snail, and the snail is a coincidence. The sea creature entered English separately, around the 1520s, as an alteration of the Old English pinewincle: pine from the Latin pina, a mussel, and wincle from a Germanic word for a spiral shell. It only ended up spelled like the flower because the older, more familiar plant name pulled it into line. Both halves trace back to Latin, pervinca on one side and pina on the other, but not to the same root, and the two periwinkles are not related at all. English simply liked the shape of the word enough to use it twice.

The color name is the newest of the three. Periwinkle was not recorded as a shade in English until 1922, a soft violet-blue at hex CCCCFF, equal parts red and green with a fair amount more blue stirred in. Run the numbers and that formula is, technically, a plain pale blue with no red bias at all; it only reads as violet-blue to the eye because it sits close enough to true blue that most people round it toward its more colorful neighbor. The flower it is named for is more assertively violet than its own color chip.

A page from an illuminated flower book with red and pink carnations in the center and small blue periwinkle flowers woven into a vine border around the edge — *Dianthus with Periwinkle Border*, folio 21 verso from a Florilegium (A Book of Flower Studies), France, 1608. Watercolor, ink, silver and gold on vellum. The periwinkle here is not the subject, only the border, trailing around the page exactly the way its Latin name describes. The Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0.

I like a color that is honest about being borrowed. Periwinkle did not invent its own hue, its own name, or even its own spelling; it borrowed a growing habit for one, a mollusk's shell for the other, and settled on a shade that turns out plainer than it looks. That is a fair description of most of the soft colors on my palette, if I am honest about it too.

Pigment facts

Colour Index	Not a pigment. A color name; in watercolor it's mixed from a blue such as ultramarine (PB29), thinned well past full strength, with only a trace of a warm red such as quinacridone rose (PV19) worked in.
Transparency	Good. At this dilution almost any blue stays transparent; the thinness does more of the work than the pigment itself.
Lightfastness	Excellent, if it is built from ultramarine and a quinacridone red, both of which hold up well on their own.
Granulation	Light. Ultramarine granulates a little even this diluted, showing up as faint texture rather than the mottling you would see at full strength.
Staining	Low. There is so little pigment in a proper periwinkle wash that it lifts easily while still damp.
Toxicity	Non-toxic. Ultramarine and quinacridone pigments carry no heavy metals in their modern form.

These describe the pigment in general. Every brand's tube behaves a little differently, so test yours on scrap paper.

How to mix periwinkle

Periwinkle is easy to underestimate, because it looks like it should be a straight blue and white tint, and it almost is. Ultramarine thinned a long way with water gets you close; the part that actually makes it periwinkle instead of a plain pale blue is a trace of a warm red worked in before the wash goes down.

Electric Rose is the pairing that matters here, and a trace is all it takes. Too much and you have drifted into lavender territory; too little and you are back to a plain sky blue with none of periwinkle's warmth in it.

Mix	Recipe	Best for
Periwinkle from scratch	Ultramarine thinned with water, plus a trace of quinacridone rose	Distant hills, evening light
Shadow on snow	Periwinkle very dilute, almost all water	Cool shadows on white
The flower itself	The same mix closer to full strength, less water	Vinca blossoms, painted up close
Cooler version	Periwinkle with an extra touch of ultramarine	When you want it reading as blue rather than violet
Warmer version	Periwinkle with a little more of the rose	Closer to lavender, softer and pinker

Closest mix from the Tobio's kit

Twilight Indigo thinned with a lot of Titanium White, then a speck of Electric Rose worked in at the very end. The rose is easy to overdo; add it a drop at a time, because too much turns this into a pink-leaning violet instead of periwinkle. Test on scrap first.

The 12-color kit does not include a tube of periwinkle, so this is how I get there with what is in the palette. Running low on a color? The 12 paint refills drop straight into the wells.

Using periwinkle in watercolor

Use periwinkle for the cool side of anything that is not quite white: shadows on fresh snow, the underside of a cloud, hills at the far edge of a landscape where color has almost given up. It is also, obviously, the color for the flower itself, painted close and a shade more saturated than everywhere else you use it.

Thin it further than feels reasonable. Periwinkle earns its name at a whisper of pigment, not at strength, and a mix that looks right in the palette is almost always too strong once it hits the paper.

It pairs well with warm neutrals nearby; a Sunset Orange or Venetian Red elsewhere in the same painting will keep it reading as a color rather than a gray mistake.

One thing I learned the hard way: next to a true ultramarine sky, periwinkle can disappear entirely, reading as an odd blue rather than its own color. Give it room. Put something warm or something plainly gray nearby, and it stops looking like a mixing error and starts looking like a choice.

Everything I use on this page is the Tobio's Watercolor Kit: twelve colors chosen to mix, a walnut palette, cotton paper, and a water brush. Want to see how any two of the colors blend before you commit? Try the interactive color mixing chart.

Get the kit

Periwinkle vs ultramarine (and lavender)

Ultramarine is periwinkle with all the water squeezed back out: a fully saturated true blue, the same family, none of the restraint. Periwinkle is what is left once you thin that blue almost to nothing and let a trace of red creep in behind it.

Lavender is the closer call, and the two get mixed up constantly. Lavender carries visibly more red, tipping it toward violet; periwinkle keeps almost none, which is what keeps it reading as blue. Painted side by side, periwinkle looks like a cooler morning to lavender's warmer evening.

If ultramarine is the sky at noon, periwinkle is the same sky an hour before dark, and lavender is the flower bed underneath it, already going gray in the last of the light.

Questions people ask

What is periwinkle color?

Periwinkle color is a pale violet-blue named for the Vinca flower. Its hex code is CCCCFF, which is technically a plain, slightly desaturated blue that reads as violet-blue mostly because of how light it is.

Is periwinkle warm or cool?

Cool. It carries almost no red, far less than lavender or mauve, which is what keeps it reading as blue rather than violet despite the name.

What colors make periwinkle?

Ultramarine thinned well past full strength, with a trace of a warm red such as quinacridone rose worked in. From the Tobio's kit, Twilight Indigo with a lot of Titanium White and a speck of Electric Rose.

Is periwinkle the same as the sea snail?

No, only the spelling matches. The flower's name comes from the Latin vincire, to bind. The snail's name is an unrelated word that got pulled into the same spelling around the 1520s because the flower name was already familiar.

Periwinkle vs lavender, what is the difference?

Periwinkle carries almost no red, keeping it close to true blue at hex CCCCFF. Lavender's floral hex, B57EDC, has visibly more red pulled in, tipping it toward violet.

Is periwinkle toxic?

No. Modern periwinkle mixes use ultramarine and quinacridone pigments, neither of which contains heavy metals.