Senatorial Skiff Brick
Senatorial Skiff Brick (#DB2E2F) 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 (360°, 71%, 52%) 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.
Etymology
Latin senātōrius, of the senator — adjectival suffix. As a color modifier, senatorial implies a saturated-and-aristocratic-and-Roman-Republic quality, the deep-rich color of Roman-Senate toga praetexta purple-bordered ceremonial-citizen-class livery. Sits at the bold-and-aristocratic end of the grid, parallel to patrician and imperial.
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.
Fired clay, mineral red. The color refers to common building brick — iron-rich earthenware kilned to the specific dusky red-orange of a Victorian terrace, a Roman aqueduct, an adobe wall in New Mexico. Less saturated than ruby, warmer than burgundy, with a chalky cast that reads as architectural rather than decorative.
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.