Tints & Shades
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Scale from white (50) through Sienna (500) to black (900), interpolated in Lab color space.
Color Values
- HEX
- #A0522D
- RGB
- rgb(160, 82, 45)
- HSL
- hsl(19, 56%, 40%)
- OKLCH
- oklch(0.526 0.115 45)
- CMYK
- cmyk(0%, 49%, 72%, 37%)
--color-siennabg-[#A0522D]Accessibility
Score: 54/100On White (#FFF)
5.62:1
On Black (#000)
3.74:1
On Light Gray (#F5F5F5)
5.15:1
Best text color on this background:
Design Applications
background-color: #A0522D
color: #A0522D
bg-[#A0522D] text-[#FFFFFF]
border-left: 4px solid #A0522D
Color Harmonies
Complementary
Baby Blue
#89CFF0
Split-Complementary
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. Its deeper, richer tone gives it gravitas and sophistication, making it well-suited for primary brand colors, typography, and contexts where authority matters.
Industry Usage
Common contexts and industries where 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
Passes AA
4.5:1 minimum required
Large Text
Passes AA Large
3:1 minimum required
UI Components
Meets 1.4.11
3:1 for non-text UI
Sienna is a dark color. Use white (#FFFFFF) text on top of it for maximum readability (5.62:1). Avoid small black text on this background.
CSS & Code Examples
Background
background-color: #A0522D;Text
color: #A0522D;Border
border: 2px solid #A0522D;Box Shadow
box-shadow: 0 4px 20px #A0522D40;Gradient
background: linear-gradient(135deg, #A0522D, #d57f58);Tailwind-style
--color-sienna: #A0522D;Tailwind CSS Utilities
Use arbitrary value syntax in Tailwind CSS to apply Sienna without a custom config.
Background
bg-[#A0522D]Text
text-[#A0522D]Border
border-[#A0522D]Ring
ring-[#A0522D]Fill
fill-[#A0522D]From (gradient)
from-[#A0522D]Via (gradient)
via-[#A0522D]To (gradient)
to-[#A0522D]Design Tokens
Ready-to-use Sienna design token in CSS custom properties, SCSS, Tailwind v3/v4, and JSON formats.
CSS Custom Properties
:root {
--color-sienna: #A0522D;
--color-sienna-rgb: 160, 82, 45;
--color-sienna-hsl: 19, 56%, 40%;
}SCSS Variables
$color-sienna: #A0522D; $color-sienna-rgb: 160, 82, 45; $color-sienna-hsl: 19, 56%, 40%;
Tailwind v3 Config
// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
theme: {
extend: {
colors: {
'sienna': '#A0522D',
},
},
},
};Tailwind v4 (@theme)
/* tailwind.css */
@theme {
--color-sienna: #A0522D;
}JSON Design Token (W3C format)
{
"sienna": {
"value": "#A0522D",
"type": "color",
"description": "Sienna — #A0522D"
}
}Related Palettes & Combinations
Color Combinations
More brown colors
View all →What Does Sienna Mean? Color Psychology & Cultural Symbolism
Color psychology research consistently places brown as the most "trustworthy" of the warm tones—not because it demands attention like red or commands authority like navy, but because it simply asks to be believed. Sienna's medium quality makes earthiness its natural register.
- Across color psychology research, brown consistently tests high for "authenticity" associations, making Sienna a reliable vehicle for earthiness in cross-demographic audiences.
- Brand designers draw on brown-family tones to project naturalness and warmth—values that Sienna communicates in a medium key.
- At 56% saturation, Sienna reads as moderately saturated—neither overwhelming nor passive, landing in the earthiness, stability, warmth, and authenticity zone with measured confidence.
- Sienna's medium lightness (40%) shifts its psychological register: a balanced mid-tone that embodies earthiness, stability, warmth, and authenticity at its most direct.
Sienna asks for trust without performance—and that quiet confidence is its greatest design asset.
How to Use Sienna in Design: Applications, Pairings & Best Practices
Sienna is one of design's most underused versatile tones. It works as a neutral, an accent, a dominant brand color, and a sophisticated alternative to black—and it brings a warmth to palettes that no other color family delivers.
- Avoid: technology products, clinical healthcare, and anything that needs to project cleanliness or digital precision.
- Color harmonies: Sienna's complementary color creates a high-energy split ideal for promotional design; its analogous palette (±30° hue) builds cohesive, monochromatic sophistication.
- Proportional use: Sienna's moderately saturated quality means it scales well across proportions—from full-bleed backgrounds to single-pixel borders—making it an unusually versatile palette component.
- As a dark tone, Sienna creates maximum contrast with white and light neutrals—excellent for creating premium dark-mode sections, bold headers, and high-drama brand moments
- Typography: Sienna works as a background behind white text but requires careful sizing—test at intended heading and body sizes before finalizing.
Sienna asks for trust without performance—and that quiet confidence is its greatest design asset.
Sienna Accessibility: WCAG Contrast Ratios, Color Blindness & Inclusive Design
Sienna (#A0522D) reaches 5.62:1 contrast with white text—meeting WCAG 2.1 AA minimum of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. It clears standard production accessibility requirements. Relative luminance: 13.7%.
- As text on white (#FFFFFF): 5.62:1 — AA ✓
- As text on black (#000000): 3.74:1 — AA (large text only)
- Best text color on Sienna background: White (#FFFFFF) at 5.62:1
- WCAG 2.1 luminance: 13.7% — low luminance (dark)—it provides strong contrast for white and light overlaid text, functioning well as a background in dark-mode and header contexts
- Sienna qualifies for normal body text and all larger sizes (AA).
- 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.
Always verify Sienna 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.
Sienna in Industry: Branding, Design & Market Applications
Sienna's brand positioning falls squarely in the territory of earthiness, stability, warmth, and authenticity. Industry data supports its strongest performance in food & beverage, outdoor & lifestyle, coffee categories, where the moderately saturated saturation calibrates the message at a medium, considered level.
- 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: 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, Sienna works effectively in coffee and chocolate brands, craft beer packaging, outdoor gear—contexts where stability serves a secondary but reinforcing role.
For marketers and brand strategists, Sienna is a commitment to earthiness, stability, warmth, and authenticity. Match it with industries that make that promise and it will pay dividends consistently.
Accessibility & Design Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the hex code for Sienna? ▾
- The hex code for Sienna is #A0522D. Its RGB values are rgb(160, 82, 45) and its HSL values are hsl(19, 56%, 40%).
- What does 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. Its deeper, richer tone gives it gravitas and sophistication, making it well-suited for primary brand colors, typography, and contexts where authority matters.
- Is Sienna WCAG accessible? ▾
- Sienna (#A0522D) passes WCAG AA on white with a 5.62:1 contrast ratio. Its overall accessibility score is 54/100.
- What colors go well with Sienna? ▾
- Sienna pairs well with its complementary color Baby Blue (#89CFF0). Analogous colors like Pink and Barn Red also work harmoniously. Check the Color Harmonies section above for the full palette.
- What is Sienna used for? ▾
- 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 Sienna? ▾
- In CSS, use `color: #A0522D` or `background-color: #A0522D`. The CSS custom property is `--color-sienna: #A0522D`. In Tailwind CSS, use the arbitrary value class `bg-[#A0522D]` for backgrounds or `text-[#A0522D]` for text.