Colors Beyond the Rainbow

The term for magenta and its cousins is non-spectral colors: hues that match no single wavelength of light. They only appear when your brain blends signals from cones at opposite ends of its range. There is no purple photon, no magenta beam — there is only your brain stitching red and blue into something new. This is not a flaw. It is exactly how every color screen works, mixing a handful of wavelengths into shades that light alone could never carry.