Poised Pluto Ruby
Poised Pluto Ruby (#A40C28) 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 (349°, 86%, 35%) places it in the highly saturated band at a mid 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 teal. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Old French peser, to weigh — past-participle of poise. As a color modifier, poised implies a saturated-and-balanced-and-confident quality where the hue holds its position with elegant equilibrium. Sits at the bold-and-confident end of the grid, parallel to centered and composed.
Latin Pluto, Roman-god-of-underworld-and-dwarf-planet. As a color modifier, pluto implies a Roman-god-of-underworld-and-Kuiper-belt-dwarf-planet quality, the visual register of Roman-Pluto-and-New-Horizons-flyby hand-Roman-god-of-underworld-and-Kuiper-belt-dwarf-planet Roman-Pluto-and-New-Horizons-flyby-and-Tombaugh-Regio pluto-and-Roman-god-of-underworld surfaces under Roman-Pluto-and-New-Horizons-flyby-and-Tombaugh-Regio 2015-flyby-and-heart-shaped-Tombaugh-Regio dwarf-planet-light. Sits at the modifier-and-zodiac end of the grid, parallel to neptune and saturn in usage.
From the Latin ruber — simply, red. The gemstone is a chromium-tinged corundum, harder than anything in nature except diamond, and so saturated that a fine Burmese pigeon's blood ruby at auction outpaces a comparable diamond by weight. The color borrows the gem's confidence: a clear, glassy red without the brown of garnet or the blue of crimson.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
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.