Suffocating Kohaku
Suffocating Kohaku (#772109) is a deep red 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 (13°, 86%, 25%) 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 cyan. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Latin suffocāre, to choke — present-participle of suffocate. As a color modifier, suffocating implies a deep-and-overwhelming-and-pressing quality where the hue overwhelms the eye's capacity to discern surface detail. Sits at the deep-and-overwhelming end of the grid, parallel to smothering with breath-restricting register.
The Japanese name for amber — fossilized tree resin imported from Baltic deposits since the Heian period and worked into ornamental beads, sword fittings, and netsuke. Also the name of a koi cultivar with red markings on white. The color refers to a polished Baltic-amber bead in a Japanese tea-ceremony display: a warm, slightly translucent gold-orange with the depth of resin. Cooler than honey, deeper than tangerine.
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.