colors
Back to gallery

Plentiful Beam Crimson

#be3228
Notes

Plentiful Beam Crimson (#BE3228) 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 (4°, 65%, 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
#be3228
RGB
rgb(190, 50, 40)
HSL
hsl(4, 65%, 45%)
HWB
hwb(4 16% 25%)
OKLCH
oklch(53.3% 0.178 28.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6866 0.2425 0.1912)
HSV
hsv(4, 79%, 75%)
LAB
lab(43.34% 54.73 39.38)
LCH
lch(43.34% 67.42 35.73)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 74%, 79%, 25%)

Etymology

Plentiful
adjective

Old French plentif, abundant — adjectival suffix -ful, derived from Latin plēnitās (fullness). As a color modifier, plentiful implies a saturated-and-generous quality where the hue carries rich visual abundance without restraint. Sits at the bold-and-saturated end of the grid, parallel to abundant and bountiful.

Beam
modifier

Old English bēam, tree-or-ray-of-light. As a color modifier, beam implies a focused-and-shaft-of-light quality, the visual register of lighthouse-and-cathedral-clerestory-beam hand-focused-and-shaft-of-light lighthouse-and-cathedral-clerestory-and-search-light beamed-and-focused-and-shaft-of-light surfaces under lighthouse-and-cathedral-clerestory-and-search-light coastal-headland-and-Gothic-nave-and-night-sky directed-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to ray and gleam 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.

#be3228
Original
#5c5325
Protanopia
#7f7122
Deuteranopia
#d10031
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
5.71:1
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
3.68:1

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
##BE3228
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6866 0.2425 0.1912)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.178

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

Related Colors

Canvas