Sass - Converting Hex to RGBa for background opacity

The rgba() function can accept a single hex color as well decimal RGB values. For example, this would work just fine:

@mixin background-opacity($color, $opacity: 0.3) {
    background: $color; /* The Fallback */
    background: rgba($color, $opacity);
}

element {
     @include background-opacity(#333, 0.5);
}

If you ever need to break the hex color into RGB components, though, you can use the red(), green(), and blue() functions to do so:

$red: red($color);
$green: green($color);
$blue: blue($color);

background: rgb($red, $green, $blue); /* same as using "background: $color" */

There is a builtin mixin: transparentize($color, $amount);

background-color: transparentize(#F05353, .3);

The amount should be between 0 to 1;

Official Sass Documentation (Module: Sass::Script::Functions)