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Decisive Pisces Crimson

#ba2a2e
Notes

Decisive Pisces Crimson (#BA2A2E) 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 (358°, 63%, 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
#ba2a2e
RGB
rgb(186, 42, 46)
HSL
hsl(358, 63%, 45%)
HWB
hwb(358 16% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(51.9% 0.180 24.9)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6711 0.2171 0.2058)
HSV
hsv(358, 77%, 73%)
LAB
lab(41.68% 56.37 33.97)
LCH
lch(41.68% 65.81 31.08)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 77%, 75%, 27%)

Etymology

Decisive
adjective

From the Latin decidere, to cut off — used as a modifier for colors that read as firm and final. Decisive black, decisive red: the implication is that the color has settled on its position and won't drift. Sits in the bold-bucket corner alongside resolute, with a slightly sharper edge.

Pisces
modifier

Latin pisces, fishes-of-the-zodiac. As a color modifier, pisces implies a two-fishes-and-water-sign-and-Jupiter-Neptune-ruled-mutable-water quality, the visual register of Hellenic-Pisces-and-Aphrodite-Eros-fishes hand-two-fishes-and-water-sign-and-Jupiter-Neptune-ruled-mutable-water Hellenic-Pisces-and-Aphrodite-Eros-fishes-and-Ichthys pisces-and-two-fishes-and-water-sign surfaces under Hellenic-Pisces-and-Aphrodite-Eros-fishes-and-Ichthys late-winter-and-February-and-March-into-April mutable-water-sign-light. Sits at the modifier-and-zodiac end of the grid, parallel to aquarius and aries 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.

#ba2a2e
Original
#564e2d
Protanopia
#7a6d28
Deuteranopia
#cd002d
Tritanopia
#494949
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
6.07:1
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
3.46:1

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
##BA2A2E
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6711 0.2171 0.2058)
P3 has visible headroomOKLCH chroma 0.180

This color is chromatic enough that authoring it as P3 native (instead of clamping to sRGB) gives a perceptibly more saturated render on wide-gamut displays — modern Macs, iPhones, iPads, and most recent OLED laptops.

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