Gaudy Fei
Gaudy Fei (#E564AA) is a true magenta with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (327°, 71%, 65%) 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 teal. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
Middle English gaude, trick / showy ornament — adjectival suffix -y. As a color modifier, gaudy implies a saturated-and-cheaply-bright-and-overdone quality, the bright color of carnival-and-fairground novelty-attraction painted-and-lit decoration. Sits at the bright-and-flamboyant end of the grid, parallel to garish and lurid in usage.
A bright, slightly cool red used in Chinese textile tradition for the inner robes of Tang-dynasty court officials. The color refers to a fei-dyed silk: a saturated, slightly cool red with the satin finish of plant-dye-on-silk. Cooler than hong, brighter than jiang. The Chinese cousin of karakurenai.
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.