Facts for Kids

Violet is a color you see near the end of the rainbow, where light has very short waves. Scientists measure these waves in tiny units called nanometers, and violet light is around 380 to 450 nanometers. The word violet comes from the viola flower, which helps you picture the color. Long ago, in 1672, Isaac Newton called violet one of the seven colors of visible light when he bent sunlight with a glass prism.

On screens, violet is made by mixing red and blue light with more blue than red. Painters mix red and blue pigments to get violet, and printers use magenta and cyan inks. Which violet can you spot around you—on a flower or a piece of cloth?

Purple and violet look similar, but they are not the same in science. Violet is a spectral color, which means it is one single wavelength of light you can find in the rainbow. Purple is a made-up color in your eye: it comes when red and blue light (or pigments) are mixed together. Because purple is a mix, artists and makers can make many different purples that lean more red or more blue.

People often use the words the same way, but painters usually call the bluer tints 'violet' and the redder ones 'purple.' On a color wheel, violet sits closer to blue while purple leans toward red. Can you tell which is which in your crayon box?

Violet and purple often stand for royalty, richness, and special occasions because these colors were once hard to make and only rich people could afford them. Violet also suggests mystery, creativity, and being different, so people use it for things that want to stand out. In some religions, like Catholicism, violet is a color of humility and quiet thought.

Not all violet pigments were safe: some older recipes used metals that are now known to be harmful, so modern artists choose safer materials. In Japan's Heian period, people prized a violet dye called murasaki from plant roots. Today violet still appears in fashion, art, and nature as a color that feels both gentle and bold.

Violet is one of the oldest colors people used. Archaeologists find violet pigments in cave paintings tens of thousands of years old, and early people used minerals and sticks of manganese to draw. In ancient times, bright purple and violet dyes were rare and worn by emperors and important leaders because the materials were expensive or hard to make.

Artists in the Middle Ages and Renaissance mixed blue and red pigments to make violet in paintings and robes. In the 1800s, the new dye mauveine made violet clothes popular, and artists such as Monet and Van Gogh used violet for shadows, night skies, and to make other colors pop. Which violet in art is your favorite?

Violet sits at the short-wavelength end of the colors we can see, just before ultraviolet light that our eyes cannot see. Its wavelength is about 380–435 nanometers, which is shorter than blue light. Your eyes have special cells called S-cones that pick up short wavelengths, but these cones are not as strong at making things look bright. Because of this, violet often looks a bit darker than blue.

Screens and printers cannot make pure spectral violet, so they mix bright blue with a little red to look like it. Violet also appears in nature: flowers like crocus, iris, lavender, and violets show violet colors, and some minerals, such as amethyst, get their color from tiny impurities. Have you seen a violet flower close up?

People have used violet colors for thousands of years from many sources. Early artists mixed minerals like manganese or iron oxides to paint in caves. Long ago, famous dyes such as Tyrian purple came from sea snails and were very rare and costly. Other violet dyes came from plants and lichens; some required special chemical steps that people learned over time.

In the 1800s and later, scientists made new dyes and pigments. The first synthetic purple dye, mauveine, appeared in 1856 and changed fashion. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists used pigments like cobalt violet and manganese violet. Today many violet pigments, including modern organic ones like quinacridone, are bright and last a long time without fading.