Go against the flow with salmon.
Learn more about this pinkish-orange color, and how to integrate salmon into your own designs, posters, and illustrations.
Mix pink with a splash of orange, and the result is a beautiful salmon color — a warm, inviting shade that shows up frequently in fashion, design work, and, yes, the great outdoors. Since every color has meaning, artists will use them to convey certain ideas or messages. Let’s explore what salmon symbolizes and how you can put it to work in your next design concept.
The meaning of the color salmon.
Salmon is a friendly and approachable color, one that can evoke a powerful sense of hope. It takes its name from the pinkish-orange skin of the fish, and it’s because of this connection that the color salmon also commonly symbolizes health, vitality, and persistence.
- HEX code #FA8072
- RGB value 250, 128, 114
Discover similar colors.
Tomato (#F85846) is a shade darker than salmon, yet still offers the same orangish-pink tones. Orange red (#F83018), coral (#FF7F50), and light pink (#FBAAA0) are also closely related to salmon.
Colors that pair well with salmon.
To best complement the pink and orange tones of salmon, aim for colors on the opposite side of the color wheel like the bluish-green tones of dark cyan or light sea green — not coincidentally, color combinations that are also commonly found in nature.
If you want to keep your palette more on the subdued side, pair salmon with a color like light steel blue. If you feel like dialing up the contrast, an eggplant purple will create a bold yet sophisticated combination. Discover even more ways to spice up your designs.
Try blending different shades of salmon in your next project. Find out what you can make — from logos and icons to illustrations and poster art — with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.