Magenta is a bright purplish-red color that looks like a mix of pink and purple. If you've ever seen a vibrant hot pink or fuchsia flower, you've seen magenta. It's the color of some tropical sunsets, certain types of orchids, and that electric pink-purple glow you might see in neon signs.

What makes magenta especially interesting is that it doesn't actually exist in the rainbow. Every color in a rainbow corresponds to a specific wavelength of light: red has long wavelengths, violet has short ones. But magenta appears when your eyes see red light and violet light at the same time, with no green light mixed in. Your brain creates the experience of magenta by combining those two wavelengths, even though there's no “magenta wavelength” of light. In this way, magenta is an invention of your visual system.

In color printing, magenta is one of the fundamental ink colors, along with cyan, yellow, and black. These four colors combine to create almost every color you see in printed books, magazines, and photographs.