Orange colors: from amber to tangerine
The orange slice of the hue wheel
Orange occupies a narrow strip of the OKLCH wheel, roughly 45° to 85° in this site's classification, between red on one side and yellow on the other. That strip is only about 40° wide, so orange is a short hue that changes character quickly: the red end reads as pumpkin and flame, the yellow end as amber and gold. Treat those angles as approximate working limits rather than hard boundaries.
There is an important lightness condition. A color in that hue range is only called orange here if its OKLCH lightness is about 0.58 or higher. Anything darker is placed in brown, which is why a deep burnt orange can end up in a different family than a bright one even though their hues match. If you need the whole spectrum of choices, start from the all colors hub.
Lightness, chroma and the limits of sRGB
Orange is a naturally light-leaning hue. The most saturated oranges in sRGB, such as Pumpkin and Tangerine, sit at a lightness around 0.72 to 0.76 with chroma near 0.18 to 0.19. There is no dark, vivid orange inside sRGB; as you reduce lightness the chroma has to shrink and the color turns into rust, copper and eventually brown.
Going the other way, tints give peach and apricot, such as Peach and Apricot, which stay warm without the intensity of the full hue. Desaturating orange gives sand and clay tones that are very useful as neutral-leaning backgrounds. Adjust each step in the picker to see how far a value can move before it clips.
Practical use and accessibility
Orange works well as an accent for calls to action, highlights and promotional banners because it stands out against both neutral and cool backgrounds. It is a common choice for warnings that are less severe than errors, which makes it a natural middle step between green success states and red failures.
The main trap is text. Bright orange is light enough that white text on it usually fails: Orange gives only about 2.0:1 against white but around 10.6:1 against black. Even the stronger Pumpkin reaches only about 2.7:1 on white. In practice, put dark text on orange buttons, or use a darker burnt orange with white text and confirm the ratio in the contrast checker. Orange is generally distinguishable by most people with color vision deficiencies when lightness differs, but orange next to red or green can blur together, so do not rely on hue alone.
One more habit worth adopting is to test orange next to your neutral background in both themes, because its apparent warmth changes with whatever surrounds it.
Orange colors to know
Useful reference points include Amber, Orange, Tangerine and Pumpkin. Orange is commonly associated with enthusiasm, warmth and caution, though such links are loose and culture-dependent; the orange color meaning guide discusses them. For related contrast data see the contrast pair pages, and to compare tools for building orange-led palettes try the tool comparisons.