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Heavy Ares Ruby

#cf174d
Notes

Heavy Ares Ruby (#CF174D) 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 (342°, 80%, 45%) 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.

HEX
#cf174d
RGB
rgb(207, 23, 77)
HSL
hsl(342, 80%, 45%)
HWB
hwb(342 9% 19%)
OKLCH
oklch(55.1% 0.210 13.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7450 0.1863 0.3111)
HSV
hsv(342, 89%, 81%)
LAB
lab(44.83% 68.04 19.87)
LCH
lch(44.83% 70.88 16.28)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 89%, 63%, 19%)

Etymology

Heavy
adjective

Old English hefig, weighty — cognate with heave. Used as a color modifier since at least the seventeenth century to indicate weight in saturation as much as value: heavy with pigment, heavy-bodied. In the engine's adjective grid, heavy sits alongside deep and plush in the dark-and-saturated quadrant. Closer to a fabric description than a pure value word.

Ares
modifier

Greek Ἄρης, god-of-war. As a color modifier, ares implies a war-god-and-iron-and-blood quality, the visual register of Olympian-Ares-and-Spartan-temple-Ares hand-war-god-and-iron-and-blood Olympian-Ares-and-Spartan-temple-and-Areopagus ares-and-war-god-and-iron-and-blood surfaces under Olympian-Ares-and-Spartan-temple-and-Areopagus Athenian-Acropolis-and-rocky-outcrop war-god-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to zeus and atlas in usage.

Ruby
noun

From the Latin ruber — simply, red. The gemstone is a chromium-tinged corundum, harder than anything in nature except diamond, and so saturated that a fine Burmese pigeon's blood ruby at auction outpaces a comparable diamond by weight. The color borrows the gem's confidence: a clear, glassy red without the brown of garnet or the blue of crimson.

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.

#cf174d
Original
#54534e
Protanopia
#817748
Deuteranopia
#e30032
Tritanopia
#424242
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
5.41:1
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
3.88:1

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
##CF174D
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7450 0.1863 0.3111)
P3 has visible headroomOKLCH chroma 0.210

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.

Related Colors

Canvas