Periwinkle as a colour name comes from the Vinca minor flower — a trailing ground cover plant with small blue-violet flowers that bloom in early spring. The colour represents the liminal space between blue and violet — belonging fully to neither.

Dreamy, slightly ambiguous, and gentle. Periwinkle sits between blue's rationality and violet's mystery — it has the quality of something uncertain, in-between, approaching but not quite arriving. Associated with nostalgia, the transition between seasons, and the tender space of almost-remembering.

Periwinkle became one of the most popular colours in early internet culture and graphic design of the 1990s–2000s. Its ambiguity between blue and purple made it useful for gender-neutral branding before "gender-neutral" was a common concept. In the 2010s, Pantone's "Ultra Violet" (2018 Colour of Year) is a more saturated cousin.