colors
Back to gallery

Weighty Age Crimson

#bc2a81
Notes

Weighty Age Crimson (#BC2A81) is a true magenta with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (324°, 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 green. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#bc2a81
RGB
rgb(188, 42, 129)
HSL
hsl(324, 63%, 45%)
HWB
hwb(324 16% 26%)
OKLCH
oklch(54.5% 0.197 349.4)
HSV
hsv(324, 78%, 74%)
LAB
lab(44.14% 63.39 -13.86)
LCH
lch(44.14% 64.89 347.66)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 78%, 31%, 26%)

Etymology

Weighty
adjective

Old English wegan, to weigh — adjectival suffix -y. As a color modifier, weighty implies a saturated-and-heavy-and-imposing quality where the hue carries visual mass and gravitational presence. Sits at the bold-and-weighty end of the grid, parallel to substantial and hefty in usage.

Age
modifier

Old French aage, period-of-life. As a color modifier, age implies a long-passage-of-time quality, the visual register of Bronze-and-Iron-and-Stone-Age multi-millennia archaeological-period age-and-epoch-marked surfaces under multi-millennia age-and-epoch-defining time-deep light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to era and eld 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.

#bc2a81
Original
#435883
Protanopia
#6e727e
Deuteranopia
#ca2052
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
5.55:1
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
3.79:1

Related Colors

Canvas