colors
Back to gallery

Spotless Annatto

#e38caa
Notes

Spotless Annatto (#E38CAA) is a soft magenta 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 (339°, 61%, 72%) places it in the balanced band at a light lightness. It works as a background wash, large-area fill, or soft illustration tone. Add a darker ink of the same hue when you need type over it. 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
#e38caa
RGB
rgb(227, 140, 170)
HSL
hsl(339, 61%, 72%)
HWB
hwb(339 55% 11%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.9% 0.111 358.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.8425 0.5648 0.6638)
HSV
hsv(339, 38%, 89%)
LAB
lab(68.02% 36.90 -1.67)
LCH
lch(68.02% 36.94 357.42)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 38%, 25%, 11%)

Etymology

Spotless
adjective

Old English spott (spot) plus suffix -less. As a color modifier, spotless implies a clear-and-unmarked quality where the hue carries no contaminating speck or stain. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to pristine and unblemished in usage.

Annatto
noun

Bixa orellana, the tropical shrub whose seeds yield a red-orange dye used as food coloring (in cheese, butter, and margarine) and as body paint by the Caribbean and Central American indigenous peoples. The color refers to fresh annatto paste: a saturated, slightly orange red with the matte finish of plant-derived pigment. Warmer than vermillion, drier than tomato.

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.

#e38caa
Original
#979cab
Protanopia
#adaca8
Deuteranopia
#f08796
Tritanopia
#a1a1a1
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
2.44:1
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
8.60:1

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
##E38CAA
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.8425 0.5648 0.6638)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.111

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