colors
Back to gallery

Strong Currant

#bb3826
Notes

Strong Currant (#BB3826) is a true red with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (7°, 66%, 44%) 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
#bb3826
RGB
rgb(187, 56, 38)
HSL
hsl(7, 66%, 44%)
HWB
hwb(7 15% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(53.3% 0.171 31.0)
HSV
hsv(7, 80%, 73%)
LAB
lab(43.56% 51.47 40.50)
LCH
lch(43.56% 65.50 38.20)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 70%, 80%, 27%)

Etymology

Strong
adjective

Old English strang, firm, vigorous — applied to color since the sixteenth century. Strong red, strong tea: a color at full strength is the maximum saturation the medium can produce. Sits at the saturated mid corner of the grid, parallel to bold in usage but slightly more focused on pigment density than on assertion.

Currant
noun

Named after the Greek city of Korinth, where the small dried grapes once exported to Europe took the name raisins de Corinthe. The color refers to the redcurrant (Ribes rubrum), a translucent, slightly blue-shifted red that tilts toward magenta when pressed for jelly. Distinct from the deeper black currant; the same shade appears in late-summer rose hips and Pinot Noir on a clear glass.

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.

#bb3826
Original
#5f5523
Protanopia
#7f7220
Deuteranopia
#ce0235
Tritanopia
#535353
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
5.67:1
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
3.71:1

Related Colors

Canvas