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Bastioned Looped Crimson

#b8332c
Notes

Bastioned Looped Crimson (#B8332C) 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 (3°, 61%, 45%) 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.

HEX
#b8332c
RGB
rgb(184, 51, 44)
HSL
hsl(3, 61%, 45%)
HWB
hwb(3 17% 28%)
OKLCH
oklch(52.3% 0.171 27.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6653 0.2425 0.2013)
HSV
hsv(3, 76%, 72%)
LAB
lab(42.37% 52.61 35.78)
LCH
lch(42.37% 63.62 34.22)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 72%, 76%, 28%)

Etymology

Bastioned
adjective

Italian bastionato, fortified-with-bastions — past-participle of bastion, derived from bastia (fortified-tower). As a color modifier, bastioned implies a saturated-and-fortified-and-projecting quality, the deep-rich color of Vauban-period military-fortress star-fort projecting-bastion stone-architecture. Sits at the bold-and-fortified end of the grid, parallel to fortified and buttressed.

Looped
modifier

Old French loupe, loop. As a color modifier, looped implies a hand-looped-and-curled quality, the visual register of hand-looped-knit-and-rope hand-looped-and-curled knit-and-rope-and-cord hand-looped-and-curled-loop-and-curl surfaces under hand-looped-and-curled knit-and-rope-and-cord working light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to coiled and twined in usage.

Crimson
noun

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 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.

#b8332c
Original
#5a522a
Protanopia
#7b6f27
Deuteranopia
#cb0033
Tritanopia
#4f4f4f
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
5.92:1
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
3.55:1

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
##B8332C
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6653 0.2425 0.2013)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.171

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.

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