Tints & Shades
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Scale from white (50) through Puce (500) to black (900), interpolated in Lab color space.
Color Values
- HEX
- #CC8899
- RGB
- rgb(204, 136, 153)
- HSL
- hsl(345, 40%, 67%)
- OKLCH
- oklch(0.7 0.086 3)
- CMYK
- cmyk(0%, 33%, 25%, 20%)
--color-pucebg-[#CC8899]Accessibility
Score: 48/100On White (#FFF)
2.78:1
On Black (#000)
7.55:1
On Light Gray (#F5F5F5)
2.55:1
Best text color on this background:
Design Applications
background-color: #CC8899
color: #CC8899
bg-[#CC8899] text-[#000000]
border-left: 4px solid #CC8899
Color Harmonies
Complementary
Opal
#A8C3BC
Split-Complementary
Similar Colors
Color Meaning & Psychology
Pink is a tint of red with fundamentally different psychological properties. Where red signals danger, pink signals tenderness and safety. Pink creates calming effects — experiments show pink holding cells reduce aggressive behavior. In branding, hot pinks and magentas are energetic and attention-grabbing; blush pinks feel intimate and soft; dusty pinks convey a sophisticated, vintage femininity. Pink's gender coding (a 20th-century convention) has made it culturally complex — contemporary brands use pink to challenge norms as much as to reinforce them. In luxury markets, pink signals romance and intimacy rather than power. Its lighter value makes it approachable and soft — suitable for backgrounds, secondary UI states, and contexts requiring the hue's character without full intensity.
Industry Usage
Common contexts and industries where Puce is applied in professional design.
- Beauty, cosmetics, and personal care
- Baby products and nursery design
- Romantic occasions and greeting cards
- Confectionery and dessert brands
- Fashion and lifestyle brands targeting millennial audiences
- Social media apps emphasizing intimacy
- Breast cancer awareness campaigns
- Toy brands and children's entertainment
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
Puce is a light color. Use black (#000000) text on top of it for maximum readability (7.55:1). Avoid white text on this background.
CSS & Code Examples
Background
background-color: #CC8899;Text
color: #CC8899;Border
border: 2px solid #CC8899;Box Shadow
box-shadow: 0 4px 20px #CC889940;Gradient
background: linear-gradient(135deg, #CC8899, #ffb8ca);Tailwind-style
--color-puce: #CC8899;Tailwind CSS Utilities
Use arbitrary value syntax in Tailwind CSS to apply Puce without a custom config.
Background
bg-[#CC8899]Text
text-[#CC8899]Border
border-[#CC8899]Ring
ring-[#CC8899]Fill
fill-[#CC8899]From (gradient)
from-[#CC8899]Via (gradient)
via-[#CC8899]To (gradient)
to-[#CC8899]Design Tokens
Ready-to-use Puce design token in CSS custom properties, SCSS, Tailwind v3/v4, and JSON formats.
CSS Custom Properties
:root {
--color-puce: #CC8899;
--color-puce-rgb: 204, 136, 153;
--color-puce-hsl: 345, 40%, 67%;
}SCSS Variables
$color-puce: #CC8899; $color-puce-rgb: 204, 136, 153; $color-puce-hsl: 345, 40%, 67%;
Tailwind v3 Config
// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
theme: {
extend: {
colors: {
'puce': '#CC8899',
},
},
},
};Tailwind v4 (@theme)
/* tailwind.css */
@theme {
--color-puce: #CC8899;
}JSON Design Token (W3C format)
{
"puce": {
"value": "#CC8899",
"type": "color",
"description": "Puce — #CC8899"
}
}More pink colors
View all →What Does Puce Mean? Color Psychology & Cultural Symbolism
Puce occupies a sweet spot in the pink spectrum—mid-tone enough to feel accessible, saturated enough (40%) to project playfulness with conviction. It's the version of pink that says something specific rather than defaulting to a category.
- Across color psychology research, pink consistently tests high for "joy" associations, making Puce a reliable vehicle for playfulness in cross-demographic audiences.
- Brand designers draw on pink-family tones to project creativity and confidence—values that Puce communicates in a mid-tone key.
- At 40% saturation, Puce reads as subdued—neither overwhelming nor passive, landing in the warmth, playfulness, optimism, and modern confidence zone with measured confidence.
- Puce's mid-tone lightness (67%) shifts its psychological register: Pale and blush pinks have a quiet elegance—used in weddings, luxury beauty, and minimal lifestyle brands for their soft romance without sentimentality.
Puce is the color that keeps surprising people who thought they knew what pink meant. Use it confidently.
How to Use Puce in Design: Applications, Pairings & Best Practices
Puce offers designers a warmth that no other color family delivers in quite the same way. Its approachability makes it excellent for moments of delight, surprise, and celebration within otherwise neutral design systems.
- Avoid: industries requiring seriousness or authority (finance, legal, government) unless used as a calculated subversion, and technology products targeting broad professional audiences without a specific cultural reason.
- Color harmonies: Puce's complementary color creates a high-energy split ideal for promotional design; its analogous palette (±30° hue) builds cohesive, monochromatic sophistication.
- Proportional use: Puce's subdued quality means it scales well across proportions—from full-bleed backgrounds to single-pixel borders—making it an unusually versatile palette component.
- Puce creates strong legibility with black text overlays (7.5:1 contrast ratio), making it a reliable background or surface color in design systems
- Typography: Puce as text requires a dark background; its 67% lightness means it provides 2.8:1 contrast on white, not meeting WCAG AA.
Puce is the color that keeps surprising people who thought they knew what pink meant. Use it confidently.
Puce Accessibility: WCAG Contrast Ratios, Color Blindness & Inclusive Design
Puce (#CC8899) achieves a 7.55:1 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: 32.8%.
- As text on white (#FFFFFF): 2.78:1 — Fail
- As text on black (#000000): 7.55:1 — AAA ✓
- Best text color on Puce background: Black (#000000) at 7.55:1
- WCAG 2.1 luminance: 32.8% — 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
- Puce 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 pink-family colors are distinguished from greens and browns. For critical UI states, supplement color alone with shape, label, or pattern cues.
Always verify Puce at its final intended size and weight using a real contrast checker—font weight and rendering environment affect perceived legibility beyond what raw ratios capture.
Puce in Industry: Branding, Design & Market Applications
Across industry research, pink-family tones consistently outperform competitors in categories built on warmth, playfulness, optimism, and modern confidence. Puce is a mid-tone expression of this advantage—best positioned in Beauty & Personal Care and adjacent markets.
- Beauty & Personal Care: Pink remains a dominant force in beauty despite its expanded semantic range. It signals femininity, self-care, and the small luxuries of personal grooming—and it works across the tonal range from bold fuchsia packaging to soft blush product photography. Gender-neutral beauty brands increasingly use specific pink tones (dusty rose, millennial pink) to retain warmth while avoiding overtly gendered associations.
- Food & Confectionery: Pink signals sweetness, freshness, and delight in food contexts. Dessert brands, bakeries, and confectioneries use it to trigger sweet-taste associations and create an atmosphere of celebratory indulgence. Particularly effective for Valentine's Day, birthday, and celebration-focused food products.
- Fashion & Lifestyle: Fashion's relationship with pink is dynamic—it cycles between softness and statement power depending on cultural moment. Currently, fashion uses pink most boldly as a color of confidence, irony, and self-aware femininity. Bold fuchsia and hot pink are more culturally resonant in fashion right now than blush; the trend trajectory matters as much as the hue.
- Brand positioning: Puce is best suited for brands projecting joy, playfulness, warmth. Categories outside this positioning—industries requiring seriousness or authority (finance—tend to see weaker results.
- Adjacent applications: Beyond primary industries, Puce works effectively in beauty packaging, confectionery and dessert brands, celebratory occasions—contexts where warmth serves a secondary but reinforcing role.
Puce earns its strongest ROI in industries where trust and recognition compound over time: Beauty & Personal Care, Food & Confectionery, Fashion & Lifestyle. Use it to build the kind of brand recognition that decades reinforce.
Accessibility & Design Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the hex code for Puce? ▾
- The hex code for Puce is #CC8899. Its RGB values are rgb(204, 136, 153) and its HSL values are hsl(345, 40%, 67%).
- What does Puce mean in design? ▾
- Pink is a tint of red with fundamentally different psychological properties. Where red signals danger, pink signals tenderness and safety. Pink creates calming effects — experiments show pink holding cells reduce aggressive behavior. In branding, hot pinks and magentas are energetic and attention-grabbing; blush pinks feel intimate and soft; dusty pinks convey a sophisticated, vintage femininity. Pink's gender coding (a 20th-century convention) has made it culturally complex — contemporary brands use pink to challenge norms as much as to reinforce them. In luxury markets, pink signals romance and intimacy rather than power. Its lighter value makes it approachable and soft — suitable for backgrounds, secondary UI states, and contexts requiring the hue's character without full intensity.
- Is Puce WCAG accessible? ▾
- Puce (#CC8899) does not pass WCAG AA on white (2.78:1 ratio). Use it on dark backgrounds where it achieves 7.55:1. Its overall accessibility score is 48/100.
- What colors go well with Puce? ▾
- Puce pairs well with its complementary color Opal (#A8C3BC). Analogous colors like Shocking Pink and Hot Pink also work harmoniously. Check the Color Harmonies section above for the full palette.
- What is Puce used for? ▾
- Puce is commonly used for: Beauty, cosmetics, and personal care; Baby products and nursery design; Romantic occasions and greeting cards; Confectionery and dessert brands; Fashion and lifestyle brands targeting millennial audiences.
- What are the CSS and Tailwind values for Puce? ▾
- In CSS, use `color: #CC8899` or `background-color: #CC8899`. The CSS custom property is `--color-puce: #CC8899`. In Tailwind CSS, use the arbitrary value class `bg-[#CC8899]` for backgrounds or `text-[#CC8899]` for text.