RAL Design System plus — hue 350

Pink is the only widely used colour term in English that does not point to a hue but to an area of lightness. There is no dark pink; what turns dark is called burgundy, wine red or carmine. That is not a shortcoming of the language but a fact of perception: the eye only reads this area as pink when the lightness rises above about L\* 60 and the saturation stays modest.

In this hue you can read that off. RAL Design 350 20 10 Mulled wine red and 350 85 15 Pale pink are exactly the same hue with exactly the same modest saturation. Yet nobody will call the first pink and the second red. So anyone working with words instead of codes in a specification or a colour recommendation runs the greatest risk of misunderstanding in the whole system here.

Human skin lies, across all types, in the red-orange area at low saturation — and the lighter shades of this hue lie close to it. That has two practical consequences.

All 53 colours in this group

RAL 350 20 10 — Mulled wine redView RAL 350 20 10 →RAL 350 20 15 — Soft redView RAL 350 20 15 →RAL 350 20 20 — Star rubyView RAL 350 20 20 →RAL 350 20 25 — Chilli black redView RAL 350 20 25 →RAL 350 20 30 — Tulip poplar purpleView RAL 350 20 30 →RAL 350 30 10 — Sparrow grey redView RAL 350 30 10 →RAL 350 30 15 — Siliceous redView RAL 350 30 15 →RAL 350 30 20 — Liqueur redView RAL 350 30 20 →RAL 350 30 25 — Wine gummy redView RAL 350 30 25 →RAL 350 30 30 — Burlat redView RAL 350 30 30 →RAL 350 30 35 — Bordeaux redView RAL 350 30 35 →RAL 350 30 40 — Dried flower purpleView RAL 350 30 40 →RAL 350 40 10 — Aubergine greyView RAL 350 40 10 →RAL 350 40 15 — Opium mauveView RAL 350 40 15 →RAL 350 40 20 — Grey carmineView RAL 350 40 20 →RAL 350 40 25 — Nectar redView RAL 350 40 25 →RAL 350 40 30 — Dark roseView RAL 350 40 30 →RAL 350 40 35 — Bonbon redView RAL 350 40 35 →RAL 350 40 40 — Cyclamen redView RAL 350 40 40 →RAL 350 40 45 — Powder redView RAL 350 40 45 →RAL 350 40 50 — Madder redView RAL 350 40 50 →RAL 350 50 10 — Innocent pinkView RAL 350 50 10 →RAL 350 50 15 — Blunt violetView RAL 350 50 15 →RAL 350 50 20 — Corundum redView RAL 350 50 20 →RAL 350 50 25 — Batik pinkView RAL 350 50 25 →RAL 350 50 30 — Beryl redView RAL 350 50 30 →RAL 350 50 35 — CrimsonView RAL 350 50 35 →RAL 350 50 40 — Madder roseView RAL 350 50 40 →RAL 350 50 45 — Signal pinkView RAL 350 50 45 →RAL 350 50 50 — Nail polish pinkView RAL 350 50 50 →RAL 350 60 10 — Art Nouveau violetView RAL 350 60 10 →RAL 350 60 15 — Mohair pinkView RAL 350 60 15 →RAL 350 60 20 — Heather violetView RAL 350 60 20 →RAL 350 60 25 — Heather roseView RAL 350 60 25 →RAL 350 60 30 — Venetian pinkView RAL 350 60 30 →RAL 350 60 35 — Dolomite redView RAL 350 60 35 →RAL 350 60 40 — Camellia pinkView RAL 350 60 40 →RAL 350 60 45 — Persian pinkView RAL 350 60 45 →RAL 350 70 10 — Cold pinkView RAL 350 70 10 →RAL 350 70 15 — Shady pinkView RAL 350 70 15 →RAL 350 70 20 — Lady’s cushions pinkView RAL 350 70 20 →RAL 350 70 25 — Coral pinkView RAL 350 70 25 →RAL 350 70 30 — Techno pinkView RAL 350 70 30 →RAL 350 70 35 — Chewing gum pinkView RAL 350 70 35 →RAL 350 80 10 — Magnolia whiteView RAL 350 80 10 →RAL 350 80 15 — Spring pinkView RAL 350 80 15 →RAL 350 80 20 — Light pinkView RAL 350 80 20 →RAL 350 85 05 — Fairy whiteView RAL 350 85 05 →RAL 350 85 10 — Orchid roseView RAL 350 85 10 →RAL 350 85 15 — Pale pinkView RAL 350 85 15 →RAL 350 90 05 — Light roseView RAL 350 90 05 →RAL 350 90 10 — Ranuncula whiteView RAL 350 90 10 →RAL 350 93 05 — Clichy whiteView RAL 350 93 05 →

More about hue 350

The first is favourable: in healthcare, changing rooms, sanitary areas and photographic studios a wall from this area gives a skin colour that looks healthy, where a green or blue wall does the opposite. The second is awkward: a wall that comes too close to the skin tone itself in fact makes the skin look flat and pale, because the contrast falls away. The usable shades are therefore not in the middle of this area but at its edges — clearly lighter or clearly more saturated than the skin itself.

Here the system contains a shade with a name that gives something away: RAL Design 350 50 45 Signal pink. In recent years a saturated pink has become a functional colour, in road markings for cycle superhighways, in sports flooring, in the conspicuous safety marking of construction plant. The reason is purely practical: pink barely occurs in the built or green environment, so a pink surface competes with nothing.

The saturation reaches C\* 50 here, slightly wider than in 340 and equal to 360. That is enough for that signalling function, but it is worth knowing that a saturated pink owes its prominence above all to rarity and not to intensity. If it becomes commonplace, it works less well. A saturated red from 360 keeps standing out because the eye simply picks up red quickly; pink does it by agreement.

53 shades, from L\* 20 to L\* 93, with an LRV from 6.4 to 83.0. At the dark end are the wine reds and carmines: 350 30 20 Liqueur red and 350 40 20 Grey carmine, colours for interior work, furniture and hospitality. The middle area yields the usable reds and dusky pink tones for walls. Above L\* 70 the range becomes light and soft, up to 350 93 05 Clichy white — a white with a trace of pink that makes a space noticeably warmer without standing out as a colour.

Those light shades have one technical point to watch. Light colours in this area consist largely of white pigment with a small quantity of red; if the binder discolours — and every alkyd system does so indoors, towards yellow — the pink shifts towards salmon or towards a dirty white. With a waterborne system that hardly plays a part, with a traditional interior paint it does, and visibly so as soon as part of the surface hangs in shadow and part does not.

Pink is the colour whose acceptance depends most strongly on the precise shade, not on the hue. Hue is the strongest predictor of whether people find a colour attractive, but this area is laden with associations that differ from one client to another. So always have the choice made at size: lay two or three candidates on A4 colour samples side by side against the wall, in the space itself, and decide there. For approval, the A4 colour sample is the colour standard.

Technical data

Hue: 350 · Shades: 53 · Lightness: L\* 20–93 · Saturation: C\* 05–50 · Lab values: per shade on the colour page · LRV: 6.4 to 83.0 · Included in: RAL D4 A4 colour samples (colour standard), RAL D2 fan deck, RAL D3 colour book, RAL D4 atlas, RAL D6 and D8 boxes

Neighbouring hues

RAL Design 340, RAL Design 360

Loose colour samples from this group

Click a colour for the available formats, or see the full product range in the shop.

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