colors
Back to gallery

Senatorial Lake

#ac2838
Notes

Senatorial Lake (#AC2838) 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 (353°, 62%, 42%) 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 teal. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#ac2838
RGB
rgb(172, 40, 56)
HSL
hsl(353, 62%, 42%)
HWB
hwb(353 16% 33%)
OKLCH
oklch(49.4% 0.167 19.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6206 0.2035 0.2337)
HSV
hsv(353, 77%, 67%)
LAB
lab(38.86% 53.25 23.89)
LCH
lch(38.86% 58.36 24.16)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 77%, 67%, 33%)

Etymology

Senatorial
adjective

Latin senātōrius, of the senator — adjectival suffix. As a color modifier, senatorial implies a saturated-and-aristocratic-and-Roman-Republic quality, the deep-rich color of Roman-Senate toga praetexta purple-bordered ceremonial-citizen-class livery. Sits at the bold-and-aristocratic end of the grid, parallel to patrician and imperial.

Lake
noun

A general term for an organic pigment laked onto an inorganic base — particularly red lakes from kermes, cochineal, or madder, used in Renaissance and Baroque oil painting where pure plant or insect dyes lacked stability. The color refers to a cochineal lake-tinted glaze in a Vermeer painting: a saturated, slightly cool deep red with the matte translucency of a thin pigment-and-binder layer.

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.

#ac2838
Original
#4e4a38
Protanopia
#706634
Deuteranopia
#bd002f
Tritanopia
#454545
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
3.11:1

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
##AC2838
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6206 0.2035 0.2337)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.167

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.

Related Colors

Canvas