Short answer
Mauve has two meanings in current use — a light purple, following the original dye, and a greyed pink close to dusty rose — while lavender is consistently a pale purple leaning blue. That split makes mauve the most disputed name in the lexicon: the catalogue's mauve falls inside lavender's region, but the crowd's mauve is ΔE00 23.8 from the crowd's lavender and only 5.8 from its dusty rose.
The Colourwise catalogue's mauve (#e0b0ff) is a light purple at about 312° hue; it falls inside Lavender, Lilac, Mauve. The xkcd survey's mauve (#ae7181) is a muted pink at about 3°, and falls inside Mauve only. To hold both, the lexicon has to give mauve a hue range of 305°–10° (through 0°), more than 60 degrees — wider than for any other purple — and mark it highly ambiguous. The overlap with lavender is correspondingly small: 7% of mauve's sRGB colours are also lavender, though 16% of lavender's are also mauve.
Mauve is French for the mallow plant. In 1859 the name was given to a reddish-purple aniline dye, because the colour resembled the purple markings on mallow petals. The first mauve was therefore a strong colour, not a pale one. The word has since been applied to softer, greyer purples and, in much decorating and cosmetics usage, to dusty pinks — the crowd survey's mauve is one of these. Lavender took the opposite route: the plant name was used for a pale purple from 1840 as an adjective and from 1882 as a noun, and has stayed close to the colour of the flowers ever since.
CSS lavender (#e6e6fa) has an OKLCH chroma of only 0.027, barely more than a tinted white; the crowd's lavender has 0.119, a clearly coloured pale purple. Anyone picking 'lavender' from a web colour list gets something far paler than the flower, and anyone asking a paint shop for lavender gets something in between. The lexicon therefore gives lavender a chroma range of 0.020–0.130: it stays pale and blue-leaning, but how much colour it carries is left open, because the sources genuinely disagree about that and not about the hue.
Because 'mauve' can mean either a purple or a pink, it is one of the few colour words worth avoiding in a specification altogether. Say 'greyed pink' or 'soft purple' and give a value. Lavender is safer, but add 'pale' or 'mid' to fix its strength. Both colours are sensitive to lighting: a pale purple under warm lamps can read grey or pinkish, and under cool daylight a pinkish mauve can lose its warmth, so the choice between them is often settled by the room's light rather than by the chart.
| Mauve | Lavender | Shared by both | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lightness (L) | 0.58–0.85 | 0.72–0.95 | 0.72–0.85 |
| Chroma (C) | 0.050–0.130 | 0.020–0.130 | 0.050–0.130 |
| Hue (h) | 305°–10° (through 0°) | 280°–315° | 305°–315° |
| Reference swatch | #e0b0ff (L 0.83, C 0.119, h 312°) | #e6e6fa (L 0.93, C 0.027, h 286°) | ΔE00 18.3 apart |
| sRGB grid colours inside | 113 | 51 | 8 (7% of mauve, 16% of lavender) |
| How settled the word is | high | moderate | — |
| Source of the value | Mauve | Lavender | ΔE00 between them |
|---|---|---|---|
| CSS Color 4 named colour | no value published | #e6e6fa (L 0.93, C 0.027, h 286°) | — |
| Colourwise catalogue profile | #e0b0ff (L 0.83, C 0.119, h 312°) | #e6e6fa (L 0.93, C 0.027, h 286°) | 18.3 |
| xkcd colour survey | #ae7181 (L 0.62, C 0.080, h 3°) | #c79fef (L 0.77, C 0.119, h 307°) | 23.8 |
Why: The printer and the dressmaker each used one of mauve's two senses.
Fix: Choose one physical reference for the whole event and name it by value, not by 'mauve'.
Why: The CSS lavender keyword has almost no chroma.
Fix: Pick a stronger pale purple and check its contrast with the contrast checker.
Each statement is labelled by kind — established fact, a standard’s requirement, observed market data, a convention, or Colourwise’s own interpretation or analysis — with the strength of the evidence behind it.
Colourwise analysisModerate evidence
The xkcd survey's mauve (#ae7181) is 5.8 ΔE00 from its dusty rose and 23.8 from its lavender.
Based on: CIEDE2000 computed by Colourwise from the published survey values.
Caveat: The survey centre is a single average from uncalibrated screens; it shows where the crowd's mauve sits, not that no one uses the purple sense.
Source: Color survey results, and the rgb.txt list of the 954 most common colour names
FactModerate evidence
Mauve, from the French for mallow, was the name given in 1859 to a reddish-purple aniline dye, after the purple markings on mallow petals.
Caveat: Summarised from a compiled etymology reference.
Source: Online Etymology Dictionary
StandardStrong evidence
CSS Color Level 4 defines lavender as #e6e6fa, a very pale bluish tint, and has no mauve keyword.
Source: CSS Color Module Level 4
Colourwise interpretationModerate evidence
Mauve currently has two competing senses in English, a light purple and a greyed pink, so the name alone cannot identify a colour.
Based on: The catalogue value (following the dye) and the crowd survey value differ by more than 60° of hue; each falls in a different set of lexicon regions.
Reviewed 29 September 2026. Colourwise summarises its sources in its own words and does not reproduce standards text or proprietary colour data. Spotted an error? Tell us.