Bleached Salmon
Bleached Salmon (#B18C96) 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 (344°, 19%, 62%) 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 teal. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
The past participle of bleach, to whiten by chemical or solar action. Used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that have lost their original saturation through chemical treatment or sun exposure. Bleached wood, bleached linen: low saturation combined with high lightness. Sits at the pale-bucket alongside faded.
Named for the flesh of the wild Pacific or Atlantic salmon — Oncorhynchus and Salmo salar — colored by carotenoid pigments in the krill and shrimp the fish eats. A pale, peachy red that sits between coral and apricot, warmer than rose and lighter than vermillion. In farmed salmon the color is added to the feed; in wild salmon, it's diet alone.
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.