Hellish Bordeaux
Hellish Bordeaux (#81142D) 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 (346°, 73%, 29%) 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 teal. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old English helle, hell — adjectival suffix -ish. As a color modifier, hellish implies the deep-glowing-furnace-darkness of Dante-and-Bosch infernal-imagery, where heat and shadow combine in the painted-and-poetic Christian underworld. Sits at the deep-and-warm end of the grid, parallel to infernal and warmer than plutonian.
The French wine region — and the deep red of Cabernet Sauvignon-and-Merlot blends from the Médoc and Saint-Émilion. Bordeaux as a color refers specifically to a young Médoc in a glass: a deep, slightly red-purple-shifted dark red with the optical clarity of high-tannin wine. Deeper than burgundy, cooler than wine.
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.