Is Magenta a Real Color​?

Yes, magenta is a real color. The reason why this question is asked so often is that there is no single wavelength in the visible spectrum corresponding to magenta. Since some people have interpreted this as not being a real color, the confusion arose. However, many other colors are also not in the visible spectrum: Is gray or brown not a real color?

Some argue that magenta is not a real color but only a creation of our brains when they receive an appropriate combination of light waves. But... the same statement is true for every other color!

Read the rest of the article to understand the subtle distinction between light and color. Together, we will:

• Discuss the concept of visible spectrum.
• Go through examples of extra-spectral colors.
• Discover how our brain "sees" colors.
• See how it all impacts the problem of whether magenta exists.
• And explore the rich history of the color magenta!

The visible spectrum of light ranges from 380 to 750 nanometers. In terms of colors, it goes from violet through blue and green to yellow and orange and, finally, to red.

These are exactly the colors you see in the rainbow or when you let white light go through a prism. We call them spectral colors.

Each wavelength produces a different color, but there is no single wavelength that produces magenta, brown, gray, or many other colors. These are called extra-spectral colors and can only arise as a combination of various wavelengths.

Hence, if you wonder whether magenta is a real color, and you decide to solve this problem by identifying real colors with spectral colors, then you can claim that "magenta is not a real color". However, it is much safer and much more correct to say "magenta is an extra-spectral color" or "magenta does not correspond to a single wavelength".

If magenta does not exist in the sense that there is no single wavelength of visible light that corresponds to it, how can we see this color? To answer this question and help you understand if the color magenta is real or not, we need to understand how our brains process colors.

Our eyes can detect light with three kinds of color-sensitive cells (called cones), each reacting to a different range of wavelengths:

• Long (L);
• Medium (M); and
• Short (S).

In terms of colors, these wavelengths roughly correspond to red, green, and blue (as in the RGB system!) Then our brain picks up on the signals produced by these cells and translates them into perceptions, that is, colors.

The rule is simple:

• If L-cones are stimulated, you will see red.
• If both L and M are stimulated and S is not, you will see yellow.
• If both L and S are stimulated and M is not, you will see magenta. So... if magenta is not real, what about yellow?

To learn more, check out our articles explaining what the RGB color model​ is and discussing the role of RGB in photography.

Extra-spectral colors are colors that do not correspond to a single wavelength of light. In simple words, they are not on a rainbow. We can see them when multiple wavelengths hit our eyes simultaneously. For instance, a mixture of long and short wavelengths results in magenta.

Also, colors from the grayscale are extra-spectral and any color obtained by mixing a grayscale color and any other color (either spectral or not), such as pink (a mixture of red and white), or brown (a mix of orange and black/gray).

To see how all these colors are expressed in various color systems, visit Omni's color converter.

Surprisingly, it is only for a bit more than 200 years that people have been able to produce the magenta dye. We owe its existence to the French chemist François-Emmanuel Verguin, who named it fuchsine, after the fuchsia flower. It hit the market in 1859.

Meanwhile, in London, Edward Chambers Nicholson and George Maule developed a very similar dye, which they called roseine. A year later, they rebranded it as magenta, borrowing the name from the recent Battle of Magenta, where French-Sardinian troops defeated the Austrians in Magenta, Lombardy (northern Italy). We strongly believe that this historic reference significantly contributed to the new color achieving commercial success!

So, do you still doubt whether magenta is a real color, given that it has been making real money for over 200 years?

Now that we have discussed whether magenta is a real color, it is worth learning a bit more about this fascinating color.

• In website design, magenta often appears under its alternative name: fuchsia. Here's Omni's guide on great color combinations for websites.

• Magenta is one of the colors constituting the CMYK color system, which is widely used in color printing: C stands for cyan, M for our best buddy magenta, Y for yellow, and B for black. Learn more about the CMYK color system.

• Why is magenta so common in flowers? One possible explanation is that magenta is a complementary color to green. This attribute means that magenta flowers have high contrast against the green background of the leaves, which increases their chances of attracting pollinators. If you love flowers, you will love Omni's plant spacing calculator.