I need some advice from my fellow designers. I have a wedding suite built on this rose and it isn’t getting as much traction as some of the other colors. I think it’s because I’m not using the right words to describe the color (and I’m not going to tell you what I’ve been calling it because I don’t want to influence you, I want your un-biased opinion.) So, what words would you use in a search if you wanted to find this color?
And the corollary question is, since this isn’t a clearly defined color, if I use a bunch of different color terms in my keywords to try to cover my bases will I get flagged for tag spamming? Thanks in advance for your thoughts, and I can’t wait to see how you’d describe this color because when I asked my friends, I was really surprised what they said!
Hmmm I would call it magenta, but that’s not a particularly romantic feeling word… my second choice is plum (like JB and I didn’t even peek), but plum is a little darker in my mind. The color you’ve used for the back I’d call plum. It’s a bit of a Britishism, but if you are looking for a fancier way of expressing plum you could use damson?
Fuschia, which is halfway between red and purple. The word sounds close enough to lush and luscious that it might even be appropriate for a wedding invite.
This is a fascinating exercise. Your answers are totally different from what my friends said, and also different from what I’ve been using. I’m going to stay mum for the moment so as not to influence anybody else, but I’m really intrigued by all of the different opinions as to what to call it!
Interesting. My first thoughts went to the color theory names of “violet” and “magenta,” but that may have no bearing on what a customer might think, which could well be “plum” because it’s a common color description. Maybe you shouldn’t choose a fancier sort of name that customers might not even be aware of.
I’m trying to strike a balance between exotic-sounding (which I think is the problem I’m having now) and words that people would actually use in their search. Clearly, there’s no agreed-upon word to describe this color!
Out of curiosity I looked to see what word you were using . I’ll admit that though I was familiar with the word and the basic type of thing that it is, I actually had no idea what it really looks like and had to look it up. Looking at the color, I’d say it’s as good a description as anything suggested, but yeah, unless the person searching actually uses that thing, they probably don’t automatically connect the word and the color.
To me it’s magenta or fuchsia, but to cover my bases I would definitely include more commonly searched ‘pink’ and ‘purple’ too. I use strings of color names all the time when it’s something like this that’s hard to pin down…I’ve never had any complaints about doing that. If you want to add an exotic choice how about Fandango?.. lol.
This online color-naming tool I is fun and sometimes comes up with something I haven’t thought of, https://www.ginifab.com/feeds/pms/color_name_in_image.php. I put your image to the test and a couple it came up with that I thought were pretty accurate color-wise were ‘Jazzberry’ and ‘Cardinal Pink’, but I don’t know how often people would search for those terms.
It seems the fancier words are used in the descriptions that are meant to be read after an item is searched on. For instance, when searching in an online fabric store, they’ll use the colors found in a basic color wheel: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, plus white, gray, and black. Then, if the customer chooses “purple,” they’ll be shown all the different types of purple, and within those you might find fancier descriptors that are meant to sell as opposed to directing the customer to a product.
That is a fun tool! Of course, it yields dramatically different names depending on which part of the flower you sample - which may be part of the problem here!
Another fun tool! Thanks so much for sharing that link. To me it looks a lot more pink than purple, but I think it’s a good suggestion to use both words.
Alright guys, so I originally created this image for the 2020 wedding season and called it “cassis purple” which was supposed to be a trendy hot color for that year. Of course then COVID hit and all the 2020 weddings got cancelled - and honestly, I don’t think that anybody who wasn’t reading about hot wedding color trends for 2020 has ever heard of the word “cassis” (apparently it’s some sort of a berry.) The image actually turned out a bit pinker/brighter than I wanted, which is partially why the back leans more toward purple - an attempt to pull it back to the purple end of the “cassis purple” title. Not sure that worked. Ug.
After 2020 got flushed down the toilet I decided to try to come up with a more universally recognized name for the color, so I started adding the words “magenta” and “berry” but I’m still not sure that captures it. It looks very pink to me - almost hot pink or fuchsia… but who can spell fuchsia?!? Seriously, it usually takes me 5-6 tries to get it right!
My friends all agreed it should be called “dark mauve” which totally threw me! A few suggested merlot or burgundy. I generally think of those as being much redder and less bright, but since several folks here also suggested wine-themed names, maybe I should consider adding them.
And my better half, (who is a technical geek type) said that according to the standard SVG color names chart it should be called “medium violet red.”
So there you have it - clear as mud! I was sorta hoping that everyone would jump up and agree saying something like, “Oh, that’s _____” and it would be a no brainer, but obviously that’s not the case. I guess I’m just gonna put a bunch of different colors in the key words and hope that it gets close to something that people might search for.
Anyhow, thanks for all of the suggestions, and I’m absolutely open to more ideas - so keep 'em coming if you have any more thoughts. I do think it’s a pretty color, whatever you call it!
Without looking at any of the other responses, if I were a shopper looking for something in the color of your rose I would first try just ‘light purple’. Next thing that naturally comes to mind would be ‘plum-colored’. Honestly though, if I were looking for something in a hard-to-describe color, I’d Google up color charts to see what other people are calling the shade I am looking for and then search using those terms. And as a designer I would definitely do that. You can Google “purple colors chart” and get all kinds of ideas on how to describe your rose shade. I would not worry about getting flagged for tag spam. 100% indisputable, egregious occurrences of tag-spam have been left to stand even after being reported. Honestly trying to describe a color isn’t tag spam, I can’t imagine anyone flagging it as such.
Just went and read the other responses. I think there’s much subjectivity based on not just our own eyesight but on our monitors, too.
It looks very pink to me - almost hot pink or fuchsia…
On my laptop, it looks much too dark for me to consider it hot pink or fuchsia or even magenta. Your friends’ description of ‘dark mauve’ is more fitting though less pretty sounding. On my tv monitor it looks a bit brighter, I might go as far as ‘dark magenta’. But I wouldn’t consider it anywhere in the pink neighborhood on either. To me, it’s firmly in the purple class, it’s too dark to be a pink to me.
On this little chart, it’s a dead-on match for ‘loganberry’. But I find it unlikely that’s a name anyone would search for.
Gosh, lavender never occurred to me for this one - but that may be because I have three other shades of this rose competing for the name “lavender.” OY!
. I’ll admit that though I was familiar with the word and the basic type of thing that it is, I actually had no idea what it really looks like and had to look it up. Looking at the color, I’d say it’s as good a description as anything suggested, but yeah, unless the person searching actually uses that thing, they probably don’t automatically connect the word and the color. 
