Brimming Pith Crimson
Brimming Pith Crimson (#AE2A1B) 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 (6°, 73%, 39%) 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.
Etymology
Old English brymme, brim / edge — present-participle of brim. As a color modifier, brimming implies a saturated-and-overflowing quality where the hue spills past the edge of its visual container with rich pigmentation. Sits at the bold-and-saturated end of the grid, parallel to replete and abundant.
Old English piþa, pith / inner-stalk. As a color modifier, pith implies a soft-inner-stalk-or-core quality, the visual register of bamboo-and-elderberry-and-rattan-pith hand-cut-and-extracted soft-inner-stalk-or-core hand-cut-and-extracted-pith-and-core surfaces under hand-cut-and-extracted-pith-and-core workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to cane and bark in usage.
From the Old Spanish cremesin, itself from the Arabic qirmiz — the kermes scale insect, dried and ground into a brilliant carmine dye prized in the medieval Mediterranean. For centuries the most expensive red on a draper's shelf, reserved for cardinals, kings, and the cloth that gave English the word crimson. Cooler than scarlet, deeper than rose; the color of pomegranate seeds and a serious occasion.
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.