Pesto Rosso

#bb3333

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

Hex

#bb3333

RGB

187, 51, 51

OKLCh

53.0% 0.173 25.3°

CIELAB (D50)

43.7, 54.6, 34.0

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 13 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 81% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 77.7; on black, Lc -24.1. 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 34.3 and 39.9 and 46.5 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

5.78:1 — passes AA

Black text

3.63:1 — large text only

White text is the better of the two at5.78:1. That is enough for body text.

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#bb3333

protanopia

#525234 · ΔE00 34.3

deuteranopia

#72722a · ΔE00 39.9

tritanopia

#8c8c00 · ΔE00 46.5

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isHot Jazz at ΔE00 0.551: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Hot JazzΔE00 0.551 · #bc3033
  • Scarlet BeebalmΔE00 1.032 · #bb2d32
  • Aurora RedΔE00 1.309 · #c13435
  • Red ObsessionΔE00 1.373 · #b63731
  • Stylish RedΔE00 1.624 · #bc3439
  • Molten LavaΔE00 1.683 · #b5332e
  • BangΔE00 1.792 · #bc393b
  • Flirt AlertΔE00 1.895 · #be3c37
  • Red ContrastΔE00 1.933 · #b33234
  • Crimson GlowΔE00 1.942 · #c13939
  • Scarlet RedΔE00 1.949 · #b63e36
  • Baton RougeΔE00 1.95 · #b8292b

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