What Colors Go with Wine Red? Elegant Color Combination Examples

The color name “wine red” can refer to a range of shades. In this article, ■#722F37 is used as one practical reference: a deep red with a slight purple-brown character. Because wine red can have a strong presence even in a small area, pairing it with lighter backgrounds and restrained supporting colors makes it easier to keep the depth while creating an elegant overall look. The examples below focus on headings, buttons, banners, and other common Web design uses.

Pair wine red with light neutrals and low-saturation colors

A deep red such as ■#722F37 stands out more clearly when paired with colors of higher lightness, such as ivory or pale gray. Limit wine red to roles such as headings and primary buttons, then give most of the background area to a lighter color. This creates visual hierarchy without filling the interface with dark tones.

It also helps to use low-saturation supporting colors—colors with less vivid intensity—such as muted pink or sage. Compared with surrounding wine red with several vivid colors, this makes the depth of the wine red easier to treat as the main visual element. The impression will still change with the size of each colored area and with nearby colors, so adjust the amount to suit the page.

Three elegant color combinations

1. Keep it refined with ivory and charcoal

Use ivory ■#F7F3EF for the background, charcoal ■#2E292B for body text, and wine red ■#722F37 for headings or primary buttons. The contrast ratio, which describes the relative brightness difference between foreground and background colors, is about 12.96:1 for the body text on the background and about 8.74:1 for wine red against the background. A large light area lets the depth of wine red remain noticeable without requiring much of it.

2. Use muted pink to create continuity within the red family

Use muted pink ■#E6D3D3 for a secondary section or card background, then place wine red ■#722F37 in headings or short emphasized elements. The contrast ratio between the two colors is about 6.72:1. The colors stay related within the red family, while the lighter and softer background helps the darker wine red come forward. If you place body text on the muted pink, use a dark text color whose contrast against that background has been checked separately.

3. Combine sage and navy to avoid an all-red palette

Use pale sage ■#DCE2D7 for the background, navy ■#263247 for body text, and wine red ■#722F37 as the accent. The body text and background have a contrast ratio of about 9.76:1, while wine red and the background are about 7.30:1. Sage has restrained saturation, so even though its hue—the basic color family such as red, yellow, green, or blue—is different from wine red, the two colors are less likely to compete aggressively. This can work well in supporting sections for product or service information.

Check the area covered by dark colors and choose text colors carefully

If wine red is used as the background of a button or dark band, white ■#FFFFFF against wine red ■#722F37 has a contrast ratio of about 9.65:1. This exceeds the 4.5:1 minimum that WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.2 requires for normal-size text. Black ■#000000 against wine red ■#722F37, by comparison, is about 2.18:1 and is not suitable for normal text.

If you add a restrained gold such as ■#C6A56C for decoration, keep it to small details such as lines or icons so it does not compete with the wine red. The contrast ratio between ■#C6A56C and ■#722F37 is about 4.13:1, which is below the 4.5:1 requirement for normal-size body text, so this pair should not be treated as a normal text-and-background combination.

In HueRoll, you can enter ■#722F37 as a six-digit HEX code, a hexadecimal format used to represent Web colors, and review tints, shades, complementary colors, analogous colors, other palette suggestions, and contrast against white or black. HueRoll does not compare arbitrary color pairs or automatically determine WCAG AA or AAA conformance, so the pairwise contrast ratios in this article were calculated separately.