Building a Pastel UI with This Palette
Cotton Candy creates an interface that feels gentle, welcoming, and visually soothing. Use Lavender Blush (#FFF0F5) as your page background for a warm, near-white canvas that feels softer than pure white. Light Pink (#FFD1DC) works as card backgrounds and section highlights, while Rose Pink (#FFB3C6) adds definition through borders and input field accents. Hot Pink (#FF8FAB) serves as your primary interactive color for buttons, links, and active states. The supporting pastels each fill a semantic role: Powder Blue for informational elements and secondary actions, Mint Green for success states and positive feedback, Periwinkle for category tags and tertiary navigation, and Peach for callout boxes and gentle notifications. The key to working with an all-pastel palette is establishing text hierarchy through a strong dark text color like #1a1a1a or #2d2d2d rather than trying to create hierarchy through the pastel shades alone.
Why These Specific Colors?
Cotton Candy draws from the analogous pink family (340-346 degrees) for its four primary shades, creating a cohesive pink gradient that ranges from barely-there blush at 97% lightness to vivid hot pink at 78% lightness. This gives designers a smooth ramp of intensity within a single hue family for layering surfaces and creating depth. The four accent colors were chosen from opposing regions of the color wheel to provide functional variety while maintaining visual harmony. Powder Blue (182 degrees) and Mint Green (158 degrees) sit in the cool cyan-green range, creating gentle contrast with the pink family. Periwinkle (228 degrees) bridges the warm pinks and cool blues with its blue-violet position. Peach (24 degrees) anchors the warm end of the spectrum. All eight colors maintain lightness values between 76% and 97%, ensuring they all read as pastels and none overpowers the others.
Accessibility Notes
Pastel palettes present a unique accessibility challenge because all background colors are light, making it essential to pair them with sufficiently dark text. Using a near-black text color (#1a1a1a) ensures excellent contrast across every background in this palette: 15.78:1 on Lavender Blush, 12.77:1 on Light Pink, 10.37:1 on Rose Pink, and similarly strong ratios on all accent backgrounds. Every combination exceeds WCAG AAA requirements. However, avoid using one pastel as text on another pastel background, as the contrast ratios between any two colors in this palette will be far too low for readable text. Hot Pink on Lavender Blush, for example, only achieves 1.95:1, which fails even AA for large text. For interactive elements like buttons using Hot Pink as a background, pair with white or near-black text and ensure focus indicators use a dark outline or ring rather than another pastel shade.
Brand and Marketing Applications
Cotton Candy is particularly effective for brands targeting wellness, beauty, childcare, and lifestyle markets. The pink-dominant palette communicates warmth, care, and approachability, while the supporting blues and greens prevent it from feeling one-dimensional. For marketing landing pages, use the pink gradient (Lavender Blush through Hot Pink) to create hero sections with visual depth, then introduce Powder Blue and Mint Green for feature sections to break the visual monotony. Email marketing templates benefit from the high contrast ratios, as email clients render colors differently and the strong dark-on-pastel pairings remain legible across platforms. For social media graphics, the palette photographs well and maintains its cheerful character at small sizes. Consider using the four non-pink colors as category or collection identifiers, reserving the pink family for universal branding elements.