What is the difference between coral and salmon?

Where the two regions overlap and where coral goes on alone

In the lexicon salmon covers hues 22°–38° with chroma 0.100–0.180; coral covers 24°–45° with chroma 0.130–0.210. Salmon's region is the smaller, 18 grid colours against coral's 50, and most of it lies inside coral. The colours that are coral and not salmon are the ones past about 38° of hue, where the pink has gone and the colour is a soft orange, and the ones too saturated for salmon. Salmon shares 0% of its colours with the lexicon's pink, despite the common phrase 'salmon pink', because pink is drawn on the purple side of red and salmon on the orange side. Coral shares 20% of its colours with orange.

Two sources, two different distinctions

CSS coral (#ff7f50) has a hue of 40° and CSS salmon (#fa8072) 28°, at the same lightness: the specification separates them by hue, coral being the more orange. The xkcd survey separates them differently. Its coral (#fc5a50) and salmon (#ff796c) share a hue of about 27°, and what distinguishes the crowd's coral is that it is darker and more saturated, with chroma 0.199 against 0.166. It is strong enough to fall inside the lexicon's red, scarlet and vermilion regions as well as coral's. So 'coral' means 'the orange one' to a web developer and 'the vivid one' to the crowd, and both are fair readings of a name taken from a red sea creature.

A red skeleton and a fish's flesh

Coral as a colour word is recorded from the mid-fifteenth century, and what it named then was red: the hard red coral of the Mediterranean, long used for beads and ornaments. The pink-orange sense is a later softening, and it explains why the crowd's coral still leans towards red. Salmon names the flesh of the fish; the word for the fish is recorded from the early thirteenth century, and the etymology source used here does not date the colour sense, so none is given. On this evidence the two names started from different places, coral from a red and salmon from a pinkish flesh colour, and coral has moved towards salmon, which would account for an overlap that is large and lopsided.

The CSS family around them

CSS defines five keywords built on these two words, and they do not form scales. The table below places each in the lexicon. 'Lightcoral' is not lighter than coral: its OKLCH lightness is 0.72 against coral's 0.74, and at a hue of 21° it is a pinker colour, ΔE00 5.0 from salmon and 13.9 from coral. 'Darksalmon' is not darker than salmon: its lightness is 0.75 against 0.74, with less chroma and a more orange hue. 'Lightsalmon' is lighter, and about as orange as coral. The keywords are independent fixed values, not steps derived from one another, so the reliable way to build a coral or salmon scale is to set lightness and chroma directly in a perceptual colour space.

Picking the word, and the colour, for print and fabric

For fashion and interiors the working distinction is temperature and strength. If the colour would look at home next to orange, call it coral; if next to pink, salmon. Both are difficult to hold constant. They sit in a part of colour space where a small change in hue moves the colour from pink to orange, so differences between a screen, a print and a dyed fabric that would go unnoticed in a blue are obvious here. Warm lighting pushes both towards orange and makes salmon look like coral. A physical reference, checked under the lighting that matters, is worth more than agreement on the name.

The data

What goes wrong, and what to do

What the evidence says

Each statement is labelled by kind — established fact, a standard’s requirement, observed market data, a convention, or Colourwise’s own interpretation or analysis — with the strength of the evidence behind it.

• Colourwise analysisModerate evidence

  CSS coral (#ff7f50) and CSS salmon (#fa8072) are 9.1 ΔE00 apart; the xkcd survey's coral (#fc5a50) and salmon (#ff796c) are 6.2 apart.

  Based on: CIEDE2000 computed by Colourwise from the published sRGB values.

  Caveat: Survey values are single centres from uncalibrated screens.

  Source: CSS Color Module Level 4; Color survey results, and the rgb.txt list of the 954 most common colour names

• StandardStrong evidence

  CSS Color Level 4 defines coral as #ff7f50, lightcoral as #f08080, salmon as #fa8072, darksalmon as #e9967a and lightsalmon as #ffa07a.

  Source: CSS Color Module Level 4

• FactModerate evidence

  Coral was originally the red variety found in the Mediterranean and used ornamentally; its use as a word for the red colour of coral is recorded from the mid-15th century.

  Caveat: First-attestation dates move when earlier uses are found.

  Source: Online Etymology Dictionary

• Colourwise analysisLimited evidence

  72% of the sRGB grid colours inside the lexicon's salmon region are also inside its coral region, and 26% of coral's are inside salmon's.

  Based on: Grid colours tested against the lexicon's editorial regions for the two terms, which are drawn around the cited anchors.

  Caveat: Depends on where Colourwise drew the regions; a different editor could move the shares by several points.

  Source: CSS Color Module Level 4; Color survey results, and the rgb.txt list of the 954 most common colour names

Related questions

Is salmon pink or orange?

Between them, on the orange side. Every published salmon value used here has a hue near 27°–28°, where red starts turning orange; pale and low in chroma, that reads as a warm pink, which is why both descriptions feel right.

Is coral closer to red or to orange?

It depends on the source. The CSS coral sits at about 40°, clearly towards orange. The crowd survey's coral sits at about 27° and is strong enough to count as a red in the lexicon as well.

What is the difference between coral and peach?

Peach is much paler. In the lexicon peach covers lightness 0.78–0.95 with chroma 0.050–0.130, where coral covers lightness 0.64–0.80 with chroma 0.130–0.210; coral is a saturated mid-tone and peach a tint.

Related topics

Go further

Sources

• CSS Color Module Level 4 — W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) (Official standard or government)
• Color survey results, and the rgb.txt list of the 954 most common colour names — xkcd (Randall Munroe) (Reference work)
• Online Etymology Dictionary — Douglas Harper (Reference work)
• Colourwise editorial synthesis — Colourwise (Colourwise editorial)

Reviewed 1 October 2026. Colourwise summarises its sources in its own words and does not reproduce standards text or proprietary colour data. Spotted an error? Tell us.