A medium-sized (body length 5-7.5 mm), strongly patterned Phaonia with three dark patches on the scutellum, which typically has an orange tip. and conspicuously clouded wing croos-veins. The thoracic dorsum has four bold dark stripes plus smaller dark patches over the prealar and supra-alar bristles. There is also a dark median stripe in front of the scutellum which is confluent with a dark mark at the base of the scutellum. There are four pairs of postsutural dorsocentrals and 2 pairs of long presutural acrostichals. The notopleurn has some hairs in additon ot the two strong bristles and the prealars are longer than the posterior notopleurals. The scutellum has two black lateral patches and a dark basal patch, and the tip is usually orange. The legs are dark except for orange hind and mid tibiae and all femoral tips. The hind tibiae have a single strong posterodorsal (in the apical third) and the front tibiae usually have a posterior brislte. The antennae are entirely blackish with a long-plumose arista and the palps are black too. The male eyes are densely hairy and very narrowly separated above, with the narrow white orbits touching. The female eyes are also obviously hairy and the frons is somewhat greater than one-third the head width.
In form 'servaeformis', the tibiae are dark and the scutellum lacks an orange tip. These can resemble P. laeta but have bolder markings on the scutellum, more conspicuous eye hairs, hairs on the notopleuri, and and in females, a greyer interfrontalia.
