Sable Porpora
Sable Porpora (#71251D) is a deep red with a warm character. It leans warm, pulling light toward red, orange, and yellow. Naturally inviting, it suits editorial and hospitality contexts. Its HSL profile (6°, 59%, 28%) 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
Martes zibellina, the Eurasian sable — a small mustelid of Siberian taiga whose deep brown-black fur was the most prized mammalian pelt of the Russian and Chinese imperial courts. The color refers to a fresh sable pelt: a deep, slightly warm near-black with the satin finish of densely packed guard hairs. Warmer than ink, glossier than coal, with the courtly weight of a fur reserved for tsars and emperors.
The Italian word for the imperial purple of Roman tradition — derived from murex shells but borrowed in modern Italian color vocabulary for a deep, slightly red-shifted purple-red. The color refers to porpora-dyed Venetian silk: a saturated, slightly cool deep red-purple with the satin finish of plant-and-shell dye. Cooler than crimson, warmer than burgundy.
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.