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Bold Brick

#aa4330
Notes

Bold Brick (#AA4330) is a true 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 (9°, 56%, 43%) 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
#aa4330
RGB
rgb(170, 67, 48)
HSL
hsl(9, 56%, 43%)
HWB
hwb(9 19% 33%)
OKLCH
oklch(51.9% 0.140 32.4)
HSV
hsv(9, 72%, 67%)
LAB
lab(42.42% 41.14 32.86)
LCH
lch(42.42% 52.65 38.62)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 61%, 72%, 33%)

Etymology

Bold
adjective

Old English beald, brave, courageous — a quality word that crossed over to color in the late seventeenth century. Bold describes a color that asserts itself: high saturation combined with mid lightness, where the hue presents itself without compromise. Sits at the center of the bold-bucket grid, near strong and rich. Closer to a presence word than a pigment word.

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

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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.

#aa4330
Original
#5f562e
Protanopia
#786d2d
Deuteranopia
#bb2c3f
Tritanopia
#585858
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
5.91:1
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
3.55:1

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