Severe Scarlet
Severe Scarlet (#491B1A) is a deep red with an earthy character. It leans grounded and natural, the kind of color that plays well with wood, clay, linen, and warm neutrals. Its HSL profile (1°, 47%, 19%) places it in the balanced band at a dark lightness. It works well as a headline, icon, or deep background in an otherwise light layout, pairing cleanly with cream, bone, and warm neutrals. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary cyan. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin sevērus, strict / serious. As a color modifier, severe implies a deep-and-uncompromising-formal quality, the dark plain-textile color of Cistercian and Calvinist anti-decorative interior aesthetic. Sits at the deep-and-formal end of the grid, parallel to austere and stern in tone.
From the medieval Latin scarlatum, originally a fine wool cloth rather than a color — the dye came later when the fabric was associated with the bright red of kermes-stained textiles. The defining red of British military uniforms, fox-hunt coats, and The Scarlet Letter. Hotter than crimson, less orange than vermillion: a pure, attention-demanding red.
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.