Root Beer
#81544a
A red that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is mid — the hardest range to put text on, either colour struggles.
Hex
#81544a
RGB
129, 84, 74
OKLCh
49.3% 0.063 33.1°
CIELAB (D50)
40.7, 18.4, 14.0
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 3 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 35% of the chroma available at this lightness and hue — there is a far more vivid version of this colour inside sRGB.
- As text on white it measures APCA Lc 81.5; on black, Lc -20.4. 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 21.4 and 22.9 and 29.1 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
6.36:1 — passes AA
Black text
3.30:1 — large text only
White text is the better of the two at6.36:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#81544a
protanopia
#5a5a4a · ΔE00 21.4
deuteranopia
#646448 · ΔE00 22.9
tritanopia
#6d6d00 · ΔE00 29.1
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isRed Rooster at ΔE00 1.184: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- Red RoosterΔE00 1.184 · #7e5146
- Vandyck BrownΔE00 1.658 · #7b5349
- Potter’s RockΔE00 1.797 · #88564c
- Ancho PepperΔE00 2.128 · #7a5145
- Beauty PatchΔE00 2.142 · #834f44
- Revival of the RedΔE00 2.336 · #7f4e47
- Red BluffΔE00 2.408 · #824e46
- Boston BrickΔE00 2.421 · #87544e
- RoastedΔE00 2.723 · #785246
- Red HookΔE00 2.95 · #845544
- Dark Cherry MochaΔE00 3.095 · #774d41
- Iron OxideΔE00 3.109 · #835949
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.