Gaudy Maroon
Gaudy Maroon (#ED6EB9) is a true magenta with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (325°, 78%, 68%) 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
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.
From the French marron, chestnut — the brown-red of the cooked nut. The color drifted through eighteenth-century English from a chestnut shade toward a darker, redder one, and now means a deep red with brown undertones, the saturation of dried blood without the violet cast of burgundy. Standard for university heraldry, leather chesterfields, and the fall foliage of red oak.
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.