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Practical Falun

#b4858c
Notes

Practical Falun (#B4858C) 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 (351°, 24%, 61%) 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.

HEX
#b4858c
RGB
rgb(180, 133, 140)
HSL
hsl(351, 24%, 61%)
HWB
hwb(351 52% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(66.4% 0.058 8.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6778 0.5290 0.5503)
HSV
hsv(351, 26%, 71%)
LAB
lab(60.22% 19.08 3.34)
LCH
lch(60.22% 19.37 9.92)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 26%, 22%, 29%)

Etymology

Practical
adjective

Greek praktikós, practical — adjectival suffix -al. As a color modifier, practical implies a clear-and-purpose-fit-and-everyday quality where the hue carries the visual register of Shaker-and-Quaker utilitarian-and-functional everyday-life craft. Sits at the crisp-and-functional end of the grid, parallel to functional and workmanlike in usage.

Falun
noun

The Swedish copper-mining town that gave its name to Falun-red — the iron-oxide paint produced as a byproduct of copper smelting and used to coat almost every wooden Swedish farmhouse since the seventeenth century. The color refers to a freshly painted Falun-red barn: a saturated, slightly muted deep red-brown with the matte finish of clay-and-iron-oxide paint. Drier than maroon, warmer than burgundy.

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.

#b4858c
Original
#8c8c8c
Protanopia
#97948b
Deuteranopia
#bd8187
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
3.15:1
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
6.67:1

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
##B4858C
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6778 0.5290 0.5503)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.058

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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