Punchy Cane Brick
Punchy Cane Brick (#B90404) is a true red with a jewel character. It carries the deep, saturated richness of a gemstone. Authoritative and slightly formal, it works well for type and heavy UI elements. Its HSL profile (0°, 96%, 37%) places it in the highly saturated band at a mid lightness. Best used in small doses, like logos, CTAs, focus rings, or highlight text, where its saturation becomes a feature rather than noise. 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
A modern adjectival form of punch, to strike sharply. Used as a color word since the early twentieth century for hues that read as highly contrasting and visually loud. Punchy red, punchy yellow: the implication is full saturation combined with optical impact. Sits across the bold and bright buckets, near vivid and striking.
Old French canne, reed / cane. As a color modifier, cane implies a hand-cut-bamboo-or-rattan quality, the visual register of English-and-Edwardian-and-Asian-cane hand-cut-and-woven-cane bamboo-and-rattan-and-wicker hand-cut-cane-and-rattan surfaces under English-and-Edwardian-and-Asian hand-cut-cane-and-rattan furniture-and-craft light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to bark and hemp in usage.
Fired clay, mineral red. The color refers to common building brick — iron-rich earthenware kilned to the specific dusky red-orange of a Victorian terrace, a Roman aqueduct, an adobe wall in New Mexico. Less saturated than ruby, warmer than burgundy, with a chalky cast that reads as architectural rather than decorative.
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.