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Dense Virgo Brick

#9f3b1c
Notes

Dense Virgo Brick (#9F3B1C) is a true 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 (14°, 70%, 37%) places it in the balanced band at a mid lightness. It works across type, buttons, and borders, saturated enough to feel deliberate but balanced enough to not fight the rest of the palette. 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.

HEX
#9f3b1c
RGB
rgb(159, 59, 28)
HSL
hsl(14, 70%, 37%)
HWB
hwb(14 11% 38%)
OKLCH
oklch(48.8% 0.140 37.1)
P3
color(display-p3 0.5775 0.2572 0.1502)
HSV
hsv(14, 82%, 62%)
LAB
lab(38.87% 39.98 39.36)
LCH
lch(38.87% 56.10 44.55)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 63%, 82%, 38%)

Etymology

Dense
adjective

Latin dēnsus, thick / crowded — sharing root with English condense. As a color modifier, dense implies a saturated-and-tightly-packed quality where the hue carries maximum pigmentation per visual unit-of-area. Sits at the bold-and-saturated end of the grid, parallel to thick and concentrated in usage.

Virgo
modifier

Latin virgo, virgin-or-maiden-of-the-zodiac. As a color modifier, virgo implies a maiden-and-earth-sign-and-Mercury-ruled-mutable-earth quality, the visual register of Hellenic-Virgo-and-Astraea-maiden hand-maiden-and-earth-sign-and-Mercury-ruled-mutable-earth Hellenic-Virgo-and-Astraea-maiden-and-Spica-grain virgo-and-maiden-and-earth-sign surfaces under Hellenic-Virgo-and-Astraea-maiden-and-Spica-grain late-summer-and-August-and-September mutable-earth-sign-light. Sits at the modifier-and-zodiac end of the grid, parallel to leo and libra in usage.

Brick
noun

Fired clay, mineral red. The color refers to common building brick — iron-rich earthenware kilned to the specific dusky red-orange of a Victorian terrace, a Roman aqueduct, an adobe wall in New Mexico. Less saturated than ruby, warmer than burgundy, with a chalky cast that reads as architectural rather than decorative.

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 explore

Harmonies

Accessibility

Color-vision simulation

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.

#9f3b1c
Original
#584e17
Protanopia
#706418
Deuteranopia
#af2135
Tritanopia
#4e4e4e
Achromatopsia
WCAG contrast

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.

The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon White
6.74:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AA Largeon Black
3.12:1

Wide gamut

Display P3 representation

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.

sRGB hex
sRGB hex
##9F3B1C
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.5775 0.2572 0.1502)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.140

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

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