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Airy Cremisi

#b494a0
Notes

Airy Cremisi (#B494A0) is a true magenta 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 (338°, 18%, 64%) 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
#b494a0
RGB
rgb(180, 148, 160)
HSL
hsl(338, 18%, 64%)
HWB
hwb(338 58% 29%)
OKLCH
oklch(69.9% 0.042 353.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6857 0.5851 0.6257)
HSV
hsv(338, 18%, 71%)
LAB
lab(64.50% 13.96 -1.79)
LCH
lch(64.50% 14.07 352.69)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 18%, 11%, 29%)

Etymology

Airy
adjective

Greek aēr, air — adjectival suffix -y, sharing root with Latin āer. As a color modifier, airy implies a pale-and-light-and-airborne quality, the pale color of Provençal-and-Tuscan mid-summer afternoon-warm-and-airy atmospheric-and-spatial-condition. Sits at the pale-and-soft end of the grid, parallel to aerial and atmospheric in usage.

Cremisi
noun

Italian for crimson — borrowed from the same Arabic qirmiz via medieval Venetian trade, and used in the deep red velvets of Florentine Renaissance court dress. The color refers to a cremisi-dyed Lucchese velvet: a saturated, slightly cool deep red with the velvet's signature optical depth. The Italian cousin of carmesí.

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.

#b494a0
Original
#9799a0
Protanopia
#9e9e9f
Deuteranopia
#b99398
Tritanopia
#9c9c9c
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).
Failon White
2.73:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon Black
7.68:1

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
##B494A0
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6857 0.5851 0.6257)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.042

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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