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Powder Fei

#aa888a
Notes

Powder Fei (#AA888A) 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 (356°, 17%, 60%) places it in the muted 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
#aa888a
RGB
rgb(170, 136, 138)
HSL
hsl(356, 17%, 60%)
HWB
hwb(356 53% 33%)
OKLCH
oklch(65.9% 0.042 14.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6455 0.5385 0.5431)
HSV
hsv(356, 20%, 67%)
LAB
lab(59.88% 13.25 3.85)
LCH
lch(59.88% 13.80 16.21)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 20%, 19%, 33%)

Etymology

Powder
noun

Talc — magnesium silicate ground to fine particles for personal hygiene since the nineteenth century. Powder blue refers to the pale, slightly green-shifted blue of mid-century Robin's-egg talc tins and the quilted cotton of newborn-boy nurseries: a soft, very pale blue with the matte finish of micron-scale particles. Lighter than periwinkle, warmer than ice, with the postwar consumer-goods association of a color tied to bath salts and powder rooms.

Fei
noun

A bright, slightly cool red used in Chinese textile tradition for the inner robes of Tang-dynasty court officials. The color refers to a fei-dyed silk: a saturated, slightly cool red with the satin finish of plant-dye-on-silk. Cooler than hong, brighter than jiang. The Chinese cousin of karakurenai.

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.

#aa888a
Original
#8d8d8a
Protanopia
#959389
Deuteranopia
#b18589
Tritanopia
#8f8f8f
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).
AA Largeon White
3.18:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon Black
6.60:1

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
##AA888A
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6455 0.5385 0.5431)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.042

This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.

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