Dense Jolly Crimson
Dense Jolly Crimson (#E81E3D) 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 (351°, 81%, 51%) 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.
Etymology
Latin dēnsus, thick / crowded — sharing root with English condense. As a color modifier, dense implies a saturated-and-tightly-packed quality where the hue carries maximum pigmentation per visual unit-of-area. Sits at the bold-and-saturated end of the grid, parallel to thick and concentrated in usage.
Old French jolif, festive-and-pretty. As a color modifier, jolly implies a hearty-and-warm-and-festive quality, the visual register of Dickens-Christmas-and-Falstaffian-jolly hand-hearty-and-warm-and-festive Dickens-Christmas-and-Falstaffian-and-Pickwickian jollied-and-hearty-and-warm-and-festive surfaces under Dickens-Christmas-and-Falstaffian-and-Pickwickian goose-and-plum-pudding-and-roaring-hearth Christmas-Eve-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to merry and mirth in usage.
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 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.