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Wisp Bermellón

#bd9ea1
Notes

Wisp Bermellón (#BD9EA1) 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 (354°, 19%, 68%) places it in the muted 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 teal. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#bd9ea1
RGB
rgb(189, 158, 161)
HSL
hsl(354, 19%, 68%)
HWB
hwb(354 62% 26%)
OKLCH
oklch(72.8% 0.037 11.5)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7215 0.6241 0.6326)
HSV
hsv(354, 16%, 74%)
LAB
lab(67.91% 11.91 2.72)
LCH
lch(67.91% 12.22 12.86)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 16%, 15%, 26%)

Etymology

Wisp
adjective

Middle English wisp, small bundle — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as barely-present or evanescent. Wisp white, wisp pink: very low saturation combined with the optical impression of something just barely there. Sits at the pale-bucket extreme alongside faint.

Bermellón
noun

Spanish for vermillion — the cinnabar-derived pigment used in the painted altarpieces of Castilian and Andalusian baroque. The color refers to a freshly mixed bermellón in a Sevillian polychrome workshop: a saturated, slightly orange red with the high gloss of pigment in oil. The Spanish equivalent of shu — different language, same mineral.

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.

#bd9ea1
Original
#a3a2a1
Protanopia
#aaa8a1
Deuteranopia
#c49c9f
Tritanopia
#a5a5a5
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).
Failon White
2.45:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon Black
8.57:1

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
##BD9EA1
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7215 0.6241 0.6326)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.037

This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.

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