A strongly saturated, intense colour — the opposite of muted.
Colourwise classifies a colour as vivid when HSV saturation is 70% or higher.
Vivid is about saturation, not lightness — a vivid colour can be light (bright yellow) or dark (deep red).
Traffic-cone orange and cobalt blue are vivid colours.
Vivid accents are the usual choice when a 'bold' rather than 'subtle' pairing is wanted.
Colourwise labels a colour vivid at 70% HSV saturation or above, which means its weakest RGB channel is no more than three-tenths of its strongest. The measured counterpart is high chroma for the lightness, and the limit is set by the medium: a screen's primaries, an ink set's solids or a pigment's purity. A reflectance curve that rises steeply from near zero to near one is what a vivid surface looks like to an instrument.
| Colour | HSV saturation | CIELAB chroma | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scarlet #ff2400 | 100% | 101.9 | Vivid |
| Navy Blue #000080 | 100% | 80.3 | Vivid |
| Emerald Green #50c878 | 60% | 59.5 | Neither |
| Teal #008080 | 100% | 30.1 | Vivid |
| Cream #fffdd0 | 18% | 22.8 | Muted |
Teal and Scarlet both score 100% and both are labelled vivid, but Scarlet's chroma is 101.9 and Teal's is 30.1: one shouts and the other does not. Emerald green, at 60%, misses the label while carrying nearly twice Teal's chroma (59.5). Navy blue is vivid by the rule at a chroma of 80.3 and still reads as a dark, quiet colour. The label says a colour is as pure as its RGB channels allow, not how loud it looks.
How this was calculated: The vivid rule (HSV saturation of 70% or more) beside CIELAB chroma for the same catalogue HEX values.
A vivid brand colour chosen on a wide-gamut laptop is sent to print or viewed on an ordinary monitor.
The most saturated screen colours lie outside the gamut of process printing and, for colours specified in Display P3, outside sRGB as well. The colour is clipped to the nearest available one and the brand looks different in each medium.
Large areas of two vivid colours of similar lightness are placed edge to edge.
The boundary appears to shimmer and small text on it is tiring to read, because there is hue contrast with almost no lightness contrast. Separating the two in lightness, or with a neutral line, removes the effect.