Red Menace
#aa2121
A red that is saturated. It is mid — the hardest range to put text on, either colour struggles.
Hex
#aa2121
RGB
170, 33, 33
OKLCh
48.1% 0.173 26.7°
CIELAB (D50)
38.1, 54.4, 37.4
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 11 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it — this part of the space is crowded, and the names here are finer distinctions than most people make.
- It uses 88% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue — close enough to the boundary that a wider display would show it slightly more vividly.
- As text on white it measures APCA Lc 83.1; on black, Lc -18.8. 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 34.4 and 39.5 and 44.2 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
7.12:1 — passes AA
Black text
2.95:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at7.12:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#aa2121
protanopia
#454523 · ΔE00 34.4
deuteranopia
#646413 · ΔE00 39.5
tritanopia
#7d7d00 · ΔE00 44.2
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isBlood Rush at ΔE00 0.206: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Blood RushΔE00 0.206 · #aa2222
- Bloody RubyΔE00 0.92 · #a81c1d
- Ketchup LaterΔE00 1.025 · #a91c1c
- Fresh AuburnΔE00 1.274 · #a52a24
- Brick by BrickΔE00 1.618 · #b22122
- FirebrickΔE00 1.681 · #b22222
- Fabulous RedΔE00 1.702 · #a92c29
- Mammary RedΔE00 1.714 · #b00b1e
- Scarlet BlazeΔE00 1.716 · #b21f1f
- Boy RedΔE00 1.772 · #b3111d
- Siren ScarletΔE00 1.85 · #b21d1d
- Gaharā LālΔE00 2.038 · #ac0c20
7 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.