Flamingo
Retired2012-2013 · Color No. 335
Introducing Flamingo, made by The Fiesta Tableware Company from 2012 to 2013. It's a vibrant and playful shade of red, reminiscent of the bright plumage of flamingo birds. Flamingo adds a bold and energetic touch to any tablescape. Mix and match Flamingo with colors like Ivory and Lemongrass for a fun and whimsical table setting, or pair it with Plum and Slate for a more sophisticated and dramatic combination.
Production
Flamingo was retired in 2013, so it is a hunt for secondhand pieces now. Fiesta Factory Direct is where the colors still being made are, if you are filling a set.
Shop Fiesta Factory Direct (opens in a new tab)Notes on Flamingo
Flamingo lasted one year - 2012 to 2013 - which makes it one of the shortest runs in the whole line and one of the harder modern colors to find. It's a soft coral-pink, lighter and gentler than Scarlet, and it displaced Marigold on the shelf when it arrived. If you like it, the good news is that Peony, introduced in 2022 and still in production, is only about ΔE 4 away - close enough that most people wouldn't spot the difference across a table. That makes Flamingo one of the few scarce colors with a genuinely viable modern substitute.
Using Flamingo on a table
Flamingo carries enough color to lead a table on its own. Use it for the plates and let quieter pieces do the rest; two or three settings of it go a long way. Its mid lightness (L* 62) means most food reads against it without either washing out or vanishing. It nearly disappears against a white cloth (3.0:1), so it shows best on dark wood or a colored runner.
Below, 5 combinations built only from colors Fiesta has actually produced. Each says which rule it follows, and which pieces you can still buy today.
The pairing in its own description
Named in the descriptionThese colors are named alongside Flamingo in this guide's description of it.
- Ivory
-
Your color Flamingo
- Lemongrass
- Plum
- Slate
Buy these to go with it
Flamingo was retired in 2013, but these are all in production now - the set you can actually finish buying.
Opposite on the wheel
Turquoise sits roughly opposite Flamingo in hue, which is the highest-contrast pairing the palette offers. The neutrals keep it from shouting.
- White
-
Your color Flamingo
- Turquoise, 1937-1969
- Black
All red
Every color here is from the red family, arranged light to dark. A single-family table reads calm and deliberate rather than busy.
-
Your color Flamingo
- Red, 1936-1943
- Cinnabar
Three-way split
Medium Green and Lavender sit about a third of the way around the color wheel from Flamingo in each direction. Evenly spaced hues stay lively without any one taking over.
- Lavender
-
Your color Flamingo
- Medium Green
- Black
Where Flamingo sits in the line
Flamingo arrived while Scarlet was still in production, and is lighter and more muted than it - a clearly different glaze rather than a reformulation (ΔE 17.0). It lasted 1 year where the median for its era is 7, which is why it turns up so rarely. In 2012 it took the place of Marigold on the shelf. What else happened in 2012 →
Closest colors in the palette
Ranked by CIEDE2000 (ΔE) against Flamingo. Under about ΔE 5 two colors are hard to tell apart side by side - useful when you are identifying an unmarked piece.
On the table alongside Flamingo
15 colors were in production at the same time. The 10 nearest in the timeline: