Black Wash
#0c0c0c
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
#0c0c0c
RGB
12, 12, 12
OKLCh
15.4% 0.000 0.0°
CIELAB (D50)
3.3, 0.0, 0.0
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 24 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 105.7; 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
19.56:1 — passes AA
Black text
1.07:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at19.56:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#0c0c0c
protanopia
#0c0c0c · ΔE00 0.0
deuteranopia
#0c0c0c · ΔE00 0.0
tritanopia
#0c0c0c · ΔE00 0.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isRaven at ΔE00 0.175: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- RavenΔE00 0.175 · #0b0b0b
- Existential AngstΔE00 0.34 · #0a0a0a
- Chaos BlackΔE00 0.588 · #0f0f0f
- Reversed GreyΔE00 0.661 · #080808
- Badab Black WashΔE00 0.714 · #0a0908
- Accursed BlackΔE00 0.83 · #090807
- Black MetalΔE00 0.98 · #060606
- Dreamless SleepΔE00 1.035 · #111111
- Black SheepΔE00 1.051 · #0f0d0d
- Dark Tone InkΔE00 1.275 · #121212
- Ruined SmoresΔE00 1.424 · #0f1012
- Armour WashΔE00 1.456 · #030303
7 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.