Dark Alizarin
Dark Alizarin (#642254) is a deep magenta 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 (315°, 49%, 26%) 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 green. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old English deorc, dark, gloomy — cognate with the German dunkel and the Latin terra, earth, both pointing to a base meaning of covered or obscured. As a color modifier, dark sits on the lightness axis only: it says nothing about hue or saturation, only that the value is low. Used across every adjective bucket the engine routes to when L < 0.40.
1,2-dihydroxyanthraquinone — the principal anthraquinone dye component of madder root (Rubia tinctorum), first isolated and synthesized in 1869 by Carl Graebe and Carl Liebermann. Alizarin color refers to a freshly alizarin-mordant-dyed wool: a saturated, slightly cool deep magenta with the matte finish of anthraquinone-dye-on-mordanted woolen fiber. The first natural pigment to be replaced by a synthetic.
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.