PR255 is an awesome, lightfast red-orange with incredible mixing abilities. It is equally fabulous as it's more-middle-red cousin, Pyrrole Red, PR254, which is a bit better known. These two colors differ slightly with PR255 being more orange-leaning. Pyrrole Scarlet makes exquisite high-chroma tints. Despite being an amazing color with excellent lightfastness, PR255 is only available as a single-pigment in a handful of brands.

Why would you want PR255 Pyrrole Scarlet in addition to PR254 Pyrrole Red? Pyrrole Scarlet makes smashing, chromatic tints that lean a little oranger than Pyrrole Red. In fact, we prize Pyrrole Scarlet most for its ability to make gorgeous high chroma coral tints when mixed with Titanium White. As an aside, there is a version of Pyrrole Red made by Vasari that behaves a lot like Pyrrole Scarlet.

While Pyrrole Scarlet PR255 is not as opaque as cadmium red-orange, it is capable of a bit higher chroma in mixes with white. We've been surprised how hard it can be to find Pyrrole Scarlet as a single-pigment, and even where it is sold, it is sometimes not available in larger sizes. We've had to resort to buying multiple standard-sized tubes of oils in order to obtain a quantity of Pyrrole Scarlet.

PR255 has excellent lightfastness. In long-term lightfastness testing, informal tests suggest that it may be a little less durable than PR255, but it is still outstanding, especially for a red pigment. For context, in watercolor, Schmincke assigns both versions four out of five stars, with five stars usually describing pigments like earthtones which have exceptionally high lightfastness.