Punchy Skiff Rose
Punchy Skiff Rose (#BC023E) 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 (341°, 98%, 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 teal. 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.
Italian schifo, small-boat. As a color modifier, skiff implies a small-flat-bottomed-rowing-boat quality, the visual register of Cornish-and-Mediterranean-skiff hand-built small-flat-bottomed-rowing-and-sailing skiff-and-dinghy-and-rowboat maritime-architecture surfaces under Cornish-and-Mediterranean small-skiff-and-dinghy harbor-and-fishing light. Sits at the modifier-and-nautical end of the grid, parallel to sloop and hull in usage.
The Latin rosa, the Greek rhodon, the Persian gul — every European language has a different name for the same flower and the same color. Rose covers the spectrum from blush to fuchsia depending on the cultivar, but in pigment shorthand it means a cool, slightly bluish red — the inside of a damask petal, the dye that washes out of madder root.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
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.