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Confident Brick

#ab3a28
Notes

Confident Brick (#AB3A28) 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 (8°, 62%, 41%) 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
#ab3a28
RGB
rgb(171, 58, 40)
HSL
hsl(8, 62%, 41%)
HWB
hwb(8 16% 33%)
OKLCH
oklch(50.8% 0.151 31.6)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6200 0.2587 0.1875)
HSV
hsv(8, 77%, 67%)
LAB
lab(40.96% 45.25 35.80)
LCH
lch(40.96% 57.70 38.35)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 66%, 77%, 33%)

Etymology

Confident
adjective

A late-Latin participle, confidens, trusting — borrowed into English in the sixteenth century. As a color modifier, confident implies saturation combined with poise: a confident red doesn't try too hard, just sits at the level of its hue without overreaching. Sits in the bold-bucket center near bold and resolute.

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.

#ab3a28
Original
#5a5125
Protanopia
#766a24
Deuteranopia
#bc1a37
Tritanopia
#515151
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
6.24:1
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
3.37:1

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
##AB3A28
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6200 0.2587 0.1875)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.151

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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