Tints & Shades
50
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
Scale from white (50) through Burnt Sienna (500) to black (900), interpolated in Lab color space.
Color Values
- HEX
- #E97451
- RGB
- rgb(233, 116, 81)
- HSL
- hsl(14, 78%, 62%)
- OKLCH
- oklch(0.689 0.154 37)
- CMYK
- cmyk(0%, 50%, 65%, 9%)
--color-burnt-siennabg-[#E97451]Accessibility
Score: 48/100On White (#FFF)
2.97:1
On Black (#000)
7.08:1
On Light Gray (#F5F5F5)
2.72:1
Best text color on this background:
Design Applications
background-color: #E97451
color: #E97451
bg-[#E97451] text-[#000000]
border-left: 4px solid #E97451
Color Harmonies
Similar Colors
Color Meaning & Psychology
Brown is the color of earth, wood, and food — the most organic color in the spectrum. It conveys honesty, dependability, and unpretentiousness. Unlike the engineered precision of black, brown's warmth feels handmade and authentic. Coffee culture has made brown aspirational in ways it never was in the 20th century; the smell and warmth of a coffee shop is inseparable from its brown palette. Darker, richer browns signal luxury craft — leather, walnut, dark chocolate. Lighter sandy browns feel outdoor, regional, and approachable. Brown's weakness is its association with dirt and decay in medical contexts, where it is largely avoided. At medium lightness, it is the most versatile tone of this hue family — readable as text on light backgrounds, yet vibrant enough as a visual accent.
Industry Usage
Common contexts and industries where Burnt Sienna is applied in professional design.
- Coffee shops and specialty beverage brands
- Chocolate and premium confectionery
- Outdoor gear and hiking equipment
- Furniture and home furnishing brands
- Craft beer and artisanal food products
- Leather goods and accessories
- Organic and natural food products
- Heritage and classic whiskey/spirits brands
Accessibility Considerations
Normal Text
Fails AA
4.5:1 minimum required
Large Text
Fails AA Large
3:1 minimum required
UI Components
Check contrast
3:1 for non-text UI
Burnt Sienna is a light color. Use black (#000000) text on top of it for maximum readability (7.08:1). Avoid white text on this background.
CSS & Code Examples
Background
background-color: #E97451;Text
color: #E97451;Border
border: 2px solid #E97451;Box Shadow
box-shadow: 0 4px 20px #E9745140;Gradient
background: linear-gradient(135deg, #E97451, #ffa57e);Tailwind-style
--color-burnt-sienna: #E97451;Tailwind CSS Utilities
Use arbitrary value syntax in Tailwind CSS to apply Burnt Sienna without a custom config.
Background
bg-[#E97451]Text
text-[#E97451]Border
border-[#E97451]Ring
ring-[#E97451]Fill
fill-[#E97451]From (gradient)
from-[#E97451]Via (gradient)
via-[#E97451]To (gradient)
to-[#E97451]Design Tokens
Ready-to-use Burnt Sienna design token in CSS custom properties, SCSS, Tailwind v3/v4, and JSON formats.
CSS Custom Properties
:root {
--color-burnt-sienna: #E97451;
--color-burnt-sienna-rgb: 233, 116, 81;
--color-burnt-sienna-hsl: 14, 78%, 62%;
}SCSS Variables
$color-burnt-sienna: #E97451; $color-burnt-sienna-rgb: 233, 116, 81; $color-burnt-sienna-hsl: 14, 78%, 62%;
Tailwind v3 Config
// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
theme: {
extend: {
colors: {
'burnt-sienna': '#E97451',
},
},
},
};Tailwind v4 (@theme)
/* tailwind.css */
@theme {
--color-burnt-sienna: #E97451;
}JSON Design Token (W3C format)
{
"burnt-sienna": {
"value": "#E97451",
"type": "color",
"description": "Burnt Sienna — #E97451"
}
}More brown colors
View all →What Does Burnt Sienna Mean? Color Psychology & Cultural Symbolism
The design power of Burnt Sienna lies in its material authenticity. At #E97451, this mid-tone tone communicates warmth in the way only earthy, natural colors can—without spectacle, just presence.
- Brown carries the associations of the earth, wood, leather, and the materials of pre-industrial life—a grounding quality that contemporary branding leverages for authenticity, craft, and natural origin. Its associations with coffee, chocolate, and wood make it an instinctive choice for artisanal food and lifestyle brands.
- Across Asian cultures, brown tones—particularly warm earthy reds and ochres—appear extensively in traditional architecture, ceramics, and clothing. Earth tones are universally associated with stability and natural order, and brown occupies this role across most of the world's cultural traditions.
- Burnt Sienna's mid-tone lightness (62%) shifts its psychological register: a balanced mid-tone that embodies earthiness, stability, warmth, and authenticity at its most direct.
- At 78% saturation, Burnt Sienna reads as moderately saturated—neither overwhelming nor passive, landing in the earthiness, stability, warmth, and authenticity zone with measured confidence.
In a world of loud design, Burnt Sienna is a deliberate quietness. It says: this is real.
How to Use Burnt Sienna in Design: Applications, Pairings & Best Practices
In digital design, Burnt Sienna adds textural warmth that screens often lack. It fights the flat, cold quality of purely digital palettes and brings a human, analog quality to interfaces.
- UI components: warm accent colors, earthy neutral backgrounds, natural brand accents—Burnt Sienna performs reliably in all these roles with its mid-tone tonal character.
- Brand & identity: coffee and chocolate brands, craft beer packaging, outdoor gear—contexts where Burnt Sienna's moderately saturated quality creates the right register.
- Typography: Burnt Sienna as text requires a dark background; its 62% lightness means it provides 3.0:1 contrast on white, not meeting WCAG AA.
- Burnt Sienna creates strong legibility with black text overlays (7.1:1 contrast ratio), making it a reliable background or surface color in design systems
- Proportional use: Burnt Sienna's moderately saturated saturation (78%) means small applications—accents, highlights, icons—deliver maximum impact without visual fatigue. Reserve large-scale use for intentional brand moments.
In a world of loud design, Burnt Sienna is a deliberate quietness. It says: this is real.
Burnt Sienna Accessibility: WCAG Contrast Ratios, Color Blindness & Inclusive Design
Burnt Sienna (#E97451) achieves a 7.08:1 contrast ratio with black text, surpassing the WCAG 2.1 AAA threshold of 7:1. This exceptional contrast qualifies it for body text, UI components at any size, and all accessibility-sensitive interface contexts. Relative luminance: 30.4%.
- As text on white (#FFFFFF): 2.97:1 — Fail
- As text on black (#000000): 7.08:1 — AAA ✓
- Best text color on Burnt Sienna background: Black (#000000) at 7.08:1
- WCAG 2.1 luminance: 30.4% — mid-range luminance—it sits in the transition zone where both dark and light text approaches require testing against the 4.5:1 WCAG threshold
- Burnt Sienna qualifies for all text sizes including small body copy (AAA).
- Color blindness consideration: protanopia and deuteranopia (red-green color blindness, ~8% of males) may affect how brown-family colors are distinguished from greens and browns. For critical UI states, supplement color alone with shape, label, or pattern cues.
Burnt Sienna's WCAG profile makes it a compliant choice for most text applications.
Burnt Sienna in Industry: Branding, Design & Market Applications
Burnt Sienna (#E97451) is most at home in industries where earthiness, stability, warmth, and authenticity are key brand values. Its mid-tone quality makes it particularly effective in Food & Beverage contexts, where the moderately saturated saturation signals stability at exactly the right register.
- Food & Beverage: Brown's associations with coffee, chocolate, bread, and wood-fire cooking make it indispensable for food brands that want to project artisanal quality, warmth, and natural origin. The color does the work of suggesting handmade, slow-craft processes before a single word is read. (examples: Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Blue Bottle Coffee) Light browns work for dairy and bakery; dark browns for coffee, chocolate, and premium spirits.
- Outdoor & Lifestyle: Outdoor, hiking, and adventure brands use brown as an earth tone that grounds the product in natural environments. Combined with forest greens and slate grays, it creates a palette language of terrain, durability, and wilderness competence. (examples: REI, Patagonia, Arc'teryx) Brown leather and canvas associations make it particularly effective for gear, footwear, and heritage outdoor brands.
- Craft & Artisanal: The craft movement across food, beer, candles, and home goods has made brown its unofficial color—it signals hand-made, small-batch, locally-sourced, and premium-for-a-reason. Any product that wants to claim artisanal credentials benefits from earthy, brown-anchored packaging. Kraft paper brown in particular has become synonymous with sustainable, artisanal packaging.
- Brand positioning: Burnt Sienna is best suited for brands projecting authenticity, craftsmanship, reliability. Categories outside this positioning—technology products—tend to see weaker results.
- Adjacent applications: Beyond primary industries, Burnt Sienna works effectively in coffee and chocolate brands, craft beer packaging, outdoor gear—contexts where stability serves a secondary but reinforcing role.
The industries where Burnt Sienna performs best are those where the audience expects stability. Build brand strategy around this alignment, not against it.
Accessibility & Design Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the hex code for Burnt Sienna? ▾
- The hex code for Burnt Sienna is #E97451. Its RGB values are rgb(233, 116, 81) and its HSL values are hsl(14, 78%, 62%).
- What does Burnt Sienna mean in design? ▾
- Brown is the color of earth, wood, and food — the most organic color in the spectrum. It conveys honesty, dependability, and unpretentiousness. Unlike the engineered precision of black, brown's warmth feels handmade and authentic. Coffee culture has made brown aspirational in ways it never was in the 20th century; the smell and warmth of a coffee shop is inseparable from its brown palette. Darker, richer browns signal luxury craft — leather, walnut, dark chocolate. Lighter sandy browns feel outdoor, regional, and approachable. Brown's weakness is its association with dirt and decay in medical contexts, where it is largely avoided. At medium lightness, it is the most versatile tone of this hue family — readable as text on light backgrounds, yet vibrant enough as a visual accent.
- Is Burnt Sienna WCAG accessible? ▾
- Burnt Sienna (#E97451) does not pass WCAG AA on white (2.97:1 ratio). Use it on dark backgrounds where it achieves 7.08:1. Its overall accessibility score is 48/100.
- What colors go well with Burnt Sienna? ▾
- Burnt Sienna pairs well with its complementary color Teal Blue (#367588). Analogous colors like Flamingo and Red also work harmoniously. Check the Color Harmonies section above for the full palette.
- What is Burnt Sienna used for? ▾
- Burnt Sienna is commonly used for: Coffee shops and specialty beverage brands; Chocolate and premium confectionery; Outdoor gear and hiking equipment; Furniture and home furnishing brands; Craft beer and artisanal food products.
- What are the CSS and Tailwind values for Burnt Sienna? ▾
- In CSS, use `color: #E97451` or `background-color: #E97451`. The CSS custom property is `--color-burnt-sienna: #E97451`. In Tailwind CSS, use the arbitrary value class `bg-[#E97451]` for backgrounds or `text-[#E97451]` for text.