Spicy Purple

#b9396e

A pink that is saturated. It is mid — the hardest range to put text on, either colour struggles.

Hex

#b9396e

RGB

185, 57, 110

OKLCh

54.6% 0.170 359.1°

CIELAB (D50)

45.2, 54.9, -0.3

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 2 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses 77% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 76.0; on black, Lc -25.7. The sign is the polarity, which the WCAG ratio discards.
  • Built into an eleven-step scale, 10 of the 10 adjacent pairs stay ΔE00 2 apart — see the ramp.
  • protanopia and deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 27.4 and 30.2 and 57.5 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

5.42:1 — passes AA

Black text

3.87:1 — large text only

White text is the better of the two at5.42:1. That is enough for body text.

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#b9396e

protanopia

#55556f · ΔE00 27.4

deuteranopia

#73736b · ΔE00 30.2

tritanopia

#8b8b00 · ΔE00 57.5

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isFiery Fuchsia at ΔE00 0.605: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Fiery FuchsiaΔE00 0.605 · #b7386e
  • HibiscusΔE00 1.722 · #b6316c
  • Raspberry RoseΔE00 2.026 · #b3436c
  • Cactus FlowerΔE00 2.097 · #af416b
  • Lilac RoseΔE00 2.226 · #bd4275
  • IrresistibleΔE00 2.23 · #b3446c
  • Valentine’s KissΔE00 2.372 · #b63364
  • ValentinoΔE00 2.418 · #b64476
  • Mauve MystiqueΔE00 2.554 · #bb4477
  • Pink ShadowΔE00 2.766 · #bb3377
  • Rich MaroonΔE00 2.903 · #b0306a
  • Medium RubyΔE00 2.909 · #aa4069

10 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.