Flash in the Pan

#ff9977

A red that is muted. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.

Hex

#ff9977

RGB

255, 153, 119

OKLCh

78.2% 0.132 39.2°

CIELAB (D50)

73.7, 36.8, 35.0

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 4 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It sits exactly on the sRGB boundary: at this lightness and hue the gamut has nothing left, and a wider display would show a more colourful version of it.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 40.4; on black, Lc -61.8. 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 29.1 and 31.8 and 39.7 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.08:1 — fails AA

Black text

10.07:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at10.07:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#ba5b3b is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.

Try it against your own background

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#ff9977

protanopia

#a9a978 · ΔE00 29.1

deuteranopia

#bfbf72 · ΔE00 31.8

tritanopia

#d3d300 · ΔE00 39.7

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isHibiscus Delight at ΔE00 0.738: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Hibiscus DelightΔE00 0.738 · #fe9773
  • Creamy Orange BlushΔE00 0.792 · #fe9c7b
  • Papaya PunchΔE00 1.883 · #fca07f
  • Orchid OrangeΔE00 1.913 · #ffa180
  • Peachy SalmonΔE00 2.097 · #ff9b80
  • Dwarven PeachesΔE00 2.139 · #ffa07a
  • CandymanΔE00 2.19 · #ff9e76
  • Salmon NigiriΔE00 2.198 · #f9906f
  • Indian DanceΔE00 2.23 · #f49476
  • Orange PecanΔE00 2.245 · #f49975
  • Autumn ArrivalΔE00 2.459 · #f9986f
  • Tropical ParadiseΔE00 2.586 · #f7a082

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