Color Spotlight: Perylene Red (PR178)

A non-granulating middle red option that’s the middle in many ways: the middle of an orange-red or a purple-red; the middle of opaque and transparent; the middle of bright and muted. With its high tinting strength, it mixes striking darks with a variety of cool colors.

Pigment Stats for PR178

Chemical family: Perylene

Lightfastness: Unclear, LFI to LFII. Said to be excellent in masstone but perhaps slightly fading in tints, but untested by me.

Toxicity: Nontoxic

My Observations of DS Perylene Red

Hue: Deep bold red / borderline crimson in masstone. Dilute tones are right down the middle light red: not peachy or orangey the way orange-reds tend to be, and not purple-pinky the way Alizarin Crimson (and its hues) tend to be.

Not the brightest red I’ve seen (noticeably duller if you put it next to, say, PR254 Pyrrol Red). But still definitely in the red category, not an earth/muted red.

Note that this color does have a drying shift, and looked both brighter and darker when wet.

Gradient: Gorgeously smooth gradient that went down real nice. I got a slight bit of “puddling” in the masstone from overdiluting, leading to a shiny spot.

Granulation: Nil.

Opacity: I wrote “semi opaque” when it was wet because I could really see a lot of red on the black line, but it almost completed faded as it dried. I’d actually say Daniel Smith is right on the money by calling it semi-transparent.

Glazing: Glazes to a dark middle crimson red similar to the “puddle” masstone that I got accidentally.

Color Mixes

Somehow looks brighter in mixes than alone, which is odd!

• With yellows, oranges that are not as fluorescently bright as some I’ve seen but still very pleasant.
• Nice “watermelon” colors with magenta like DV Red Rose Deep and SH Purple Magenta
• Neutral gray with Phthalo Green (PG7)
• Striking black with Perylene Green (PBk7), but a granulating dark brown with similar hue Jadeite Genuine
• Muted but not muddy periwinkle purples with granulating violet blues like Ultramarine and Cobalt.

In fact, “muted but not muddy” is how I’d describe a lot of these mixes. I really like the way Perylene Red somehow mixes naturalistic-looking colors striding the surprisingly-fine line between chemical brights and palette grays.

Comparison to Other Colors

Alizarin Crimson Hue (PV19)

I would say that in terms of general hue and palette role, the most comparable color is Alizarin Crimson and its associated permanent hues (like the PV19 Alizarin Crimson Quinacridone pictured). Both range from deep reds to lighter tones, and both fall somewhere between a bright and a muted tone. Alizarin Crimson equivalents tend to be more pinky and to dilute to a rosy pink rather than a light red.

Pyrrol Red (PR254)

Pyrrol Red is brighter, more of a fire engine red, where Perylene Red is slightly more muted and edges more toward crimson. Pyrrol Red is perhaps a bit more orangey, noticeable mainly in dilute. Mixes are similar although, interestingly, I found the Perylene Red mixes a bit brighter despite it being a more subdued color unmixed.

Perylene Maroon (PR179)

The pigment number for Perylene Red (PR178) is just one off from Perylene Maroon (PR179), which is usually orangier and darker; more of an earthy mixer.

In chroma, DS Perylene Red (PR178) is much bolder than muted Perylene Maroon (PR179). In hue/color temperature, it varies. I found that Perylene Red fell somewhere in between the two PR179 versions produced by Daler Rowney Artists, cooler than the Perylene Maroon but warmer than their Perylene Red.

It’s funny that Perylene Red looked so dull compared to Pyrrol Red, yet the same color seems to leap fluorescently off the page when compared to the more muted maroons. It’s all context baby!

Color Mixes

Monte Amiata Natural Sienna

Easily adapts to earthy mixes.

Permanent Yellow Deep (PY110)

Not the brightest oranges in terms of chroma (not like Quin Coral), but with the high-tinting intensity to make up for it. I could see these mixes being at home in a fall leaves painting.

Quinacridone Burnt Orange (PO48)

Again I like the way the red seems to adapt to an earthy mix, making the QBO look like a redder QBO (instead of weirdly staying behind the granulation as some pigments do).

Transparent Red Oxide (PR101)

Similar to QBO.

⭐Indanthrone Blue (PB60)

Lusciously dark mixes are possible here. I wouldn’t say PR178 is exactly a complement of PB60 so much as it makes blues, violets, and dark reds that are so dark that they appear black in masstone. Diluting also gets very pretty muted stormcloud, night sky, and merlot colors. These two-pigment darks are much darker than one-pigment dark colors e.g. Perylene Maroon or Perylene Violet.

⭐ Ultramarine Blue (PB29)

I don’t normally like the way Ultramarine mixes with warm or scarlet reds, but I’m fascinated by these mixes. As with Indanthrone, you can get a variety of strikingly dark blues, violets, and reds. In dilute, the colors get more unique and interesting.

I put a little heart next to one of the mixes because I really like it – the grayishness of the underlying violet offsets the blue-violet color separation giving the impression of startling blue shadows in a lavender cloud. In a real painting, I found this still looked a little more intense than I quite wanted, but still pretty.

The middle bottom mix is kind of cool too; the unexpected color splotches remind me of subtle iridescence of a mussel shell. Moving toward a more red-heavy mix, the color gets more uniform, the deep rich color of claret.

Cobalt Blue (PB28)

Similar overall to Ultramarine but not as striking; less dark, less color-separation and more even mixtures. Good for reliable muted periwinkle colors.

Cerulean Blue Genuine (PB36)

More neutral than the Ultramarine mixes, and stranger; a use doesn’t immediately spring to mind for the color-separating mix that sprinkles light blue over a mauve background. Once again, Perylene Maroon or Violet hues (but nicer) are possible, as well as stormclouds.

Phthalo Blue Red Shade (PB15:1)

Fairly muted brown-violets and gray-blues.

Phthalo Blue Green Shade (PB15:3)

This is a pretty close complement with fairly even grays possible. Both colors neutralize the other allowing for dark versions of themselves (e.g. a dark cyan/indigo blue, a dark red).

Phthalo Green Yellow Shade (PG36)

I found it slightly difficult to get a middle black here, it always stayed slightly brown. Perhaps with PG7.

Perylene Green (PBk31)

Makes a middle black/gray.

What Others Say

Unrated by the ASTM, my 2004 tests assign it “excellent” (I) lightfastness. In watercolors PR178 undergoes a moderately large drying shift, lightening slightly and losing more than 20% saturation. … Daniel Smith perylene red is a gorgeous rich red color; strongly staining, it is highly active wet in wet and blossoms readily when rewetted.

Bruce MacEvoy, handprint.com

I fell in love with this color a little while painting in Washington… because of the gorgeous earthy purples it made. In the desert, it can mix amazing pinks and red stone mixtures that sometimes felt more realistic than what I was able to mix with [Quinacridone Rose] or Pyrrol Scarlet. It is also easier to control in mixes compared to the scarlet, too. It is a lovely primary red with excellent lightfastness, which was the reason I picked it up to begin with. Another go-to in sandstone mixtures.

Claire Giordano, “Fall in the Southwest: Favorite Colors”

PR178 is a muted, cool red that dilutes beautifully to a soft pink, but it’s deep enough in masstone to easily read as “red” in a painting. Daniel Smith describes PR178 as a “brilliant red-orange,” but I’m calling it as I see it, and I see blue undertones in this one. (You may see color differently, and that’s a-okay.) PR178 is somewhat rare in the artist world. I’ve also tried Schmincke Perylene Dark Red, also PR178, which is exactly the same color but it suffered from performance problems—blossoming, hard edges, and binder separation. However, Daniel Smith Perylene Red paints and mixes flawlessly.

Tonya, Scratchmade Journal

My Overall Review

The handling of this color is a high point, which is rare, since I’m pretty picky about handling. I really, really love the feel of this paint as it effortlessly pours off the brush into a nice flat wash of solid red.

I initially found the drying shift disappointing. The wet color is super bright, very comparable to Pyrrol Red, and the dry color is comparatively muted, which can lead to surprises in drying. Initially, this made me lean more toward using Pyrrol Red, but eventually, I came to find the chroma of Pyrrol Red too bright, and its mixes rather muddy and disappointing. When I found myself wondering “is there a color out there that’s like Pyrrol Red, but not as eye-poppingly bright, and/or with cleaner mixes?” I realized the time had come to reconsider Perylene Red in my palette.

The other competition for this palette slot is Alizarin Crimson (or a modern, lightfast equivalent, like Alizarin Crimson Quinacridone.) If I’m being honest, I prefer the soft pink dilute and blue undertones of ACQ to the more middle-temperature Perylene Red, but the mixes with ACQ are so similar to Quin Rose that it’s hard to justify in my palette. Perylene Red is more distinct.

I find Perylene Red a useful and versatile mixer. With blues to greens, it can mix very dark darks, including very black neutrals, deep indigo blues, and luscious dark reds, often ones that I like better than the go-to single pigment equivalents (e.g. Perylene Maroon or Violet).

I find Perylene Red especially useful for mixing muted violets; ACQ’s violets are too bright for convincing late-day clouds, while a scarlet (e.g. Perylene Scarlet, Pyrrol Scarlet) simply mixes gray.

Favorite version: Daniel Smith is the only PR178 I’ve tried, and by all accounts, it’s the best. I enjoy its intensity of color and smooth handling.

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Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolor – Perylene Red, 5 ml tube: Blick | Utrecht