text: Originally, the name lavender only applied to flowers. By 1930, the book A Dictionary of Color identified three major shades of lavender—[floral] lavender, lavender gray, and lavender blue, and in addition a fourth shade of lavender called old lavender (a darker lavender gray) (all four of these shades of lavender are shown below). By 1955, the publication of the ISCC-NBS Dictionary of Color Names (a color dictionary used by stamp collectors to identify the colors of stamps), now on the Internet, listed dozens of different shades of lavender. Today, although the color floral lavender (the color of the flower of the lavender plant) remains the standard for lavender, just as there are many shades of pink (light red, light rose, and light magenta colors), there are many shades of lavender (some light magenta, some light purple, [mostly] light violet [as well as some grayish-violet], and some light indigo colors).
  Variations
  Lavender blush
  Displayed at right is the web color lavender blush. It is a pale pinkish tone of lavender.
  Lavender mist (web color lavender)
  The color designated as the web color lavender is a very pale tint of lavender that in other (artistic) contexts may be described as lavender mist.
  Languid lavender
  Displayed at right is the color languid lavender. The source of this color is the Plochere Color System, a color system formulated in 1948 that is widely used by interior designers.