Black Metal
#060606
A neutral that has no useful hue — it reads as a grey. It is very dark — white text sits on it comfortably, black text does not.
Hex
#060606
RGB
6, 6, 6
OKLCh
12.2% 0.000 0.0°
CIELAB (D50)
1.6, 0.0, 0.0
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 17 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it — this part of the space is crowded, and the names here are finer distinctions than most people make.
- It uses almost none of the chroma available here: this is a grey with a trace of hue rather than a colour.
- As text on white it measures APCA Lc 106.0; on black, Lc 0.0. The sign is the polarity, which the WCAG ratio discards.
- Built into an eleven-step scale, 10 of the 10 adjacent pairs stay ΔE00 2 apart — see the ramp.
- All three dichromacies see it as very nearly the same colour you do: its hue is not the part carrying its identity.
Text on this colour
White text
20.26:1 — passes AA
Black text
1.04:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at20.26:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#060606
protanopia
#060606 · ΔE00 0.0
deuteranopia
#060606 · ΔE00 0.0
tritanopia
#060606 · ΔE00 0.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isReversed Grey at ΔE00 0.319: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Reversed GreyΔE00 0.319 · #080808
- Armour WashΔE00 0.476 · #030303
- Accursed BlackΔE00 0.635 · #090807
- Existential AngstΔE00 0.64 · #0a0a0a
- Badab Black WashΔE00 0.735 · #0a0908
- Binary BlackΔE00 0.791 · #010101
- RavenΔE00 0.805 · #0b0b0b
- Black HoleΔE00 0.848 · #010203
- BlackΔE00 0.948 · #000000
- Black WashΔE00 0.98 · #0c0c0c
- VantablackΔE00 1.041 · #000100
- Registration BlackΔE00 1.423 · #000200
8 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.