Tartarean Sienna
Tartarean Sienna (#491A03) is a deep orange with a jewel character. It carries the deep, saturated richness of a gemstone. Authoritative and slightly formal, it works well for type and heavy UI elements. Its HSL profile (20°, 92%, 15%) places it in the highly saturated band at a dark lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Greek Tartárean, of Tartarus — adjectival form of Tartarus, the deepest pit beneath Hades. As a color modifier, tartarean implies a literary-classical-deep-darkness quality, parallel to Stygian and Cimmerian in poetic register. Sits at the deepest end of the grid, with classical-literary connotations.
Named for the Tuscan city of Siena, which lent its name to the iron-rich earth pigment ground from local clay since the Renaissance. Raw sienna is a warm yellow-brown; burnt sienna is the same earth fired in a kiln to a deeper red-orange. The color refers to the burnt form: a warm, dusty orange with the matte finish of mineral pigment, used in Florentine fresco and oil painting alike.
Closest matches
The nearest named color in three reference sources, ranked by perceptual distance (ΔE76 in CIELAB). ΔE < 1 is imperceptible to most viewers; ΔE > 10 is clearly different. When two sources point to the same hex they’re merged into one tile; click any to open that color’s page.
Variations
Click any swatch to exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
How this color appears to viewers with the four major color-vision-deficiency types. Computed via the Machado (2009) physiologically-based model. If a tile matches the original, the color reads the same to that viewer.
The color used as foreground text against pure white and pure black, with the contrast ratio and WCAG 2.1 grade. Aim for AA (4.5:1) for body text and AA Large (3:1) for 18 pt+ headlines; AAA (7:1) is the gold standard for long-form reading surfaces.
Wide gamut
The CSS Color 4 wide-gamut form of this color. Both swatches render the same color on every display — the P3 form only diverges from sRGB when a designer pushes channels outside sRGB's reach.
This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.