Satin Deep Black
#1c1e21
A neutral that has no useful hue — it reads as a grey. It is dark — it carries white text and needs care with black.
Hex
#1c1e21
RGB
28, 30, 33
OKLCh
23.4% 0.006 258.4°
CIELAB (D50)
11.1, -0.4, -2.4
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 3 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 7% of the chroma available at this lightness and hue — there is a far more vivid version of this colour inside sRGB.
- As text on white it measures APCA Lc 103.7; 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
16.71:1 — passes AA
Black text
1.26:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at16.71:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#1c1e21
protanopia
#1e1e21 · ΔE00 1.5
deuteranopia
#1d1d21 · ΔE00 1.6
tritanopia
#1d1d26 · ΔE00 4.3
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isNoble Black at ΔE00 1.23: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- Noble BlackΔE00 1.23 · #202124
- Inkwell InceptionΔE00 1.437 · #1e1e21
- Gluon GreyΔE00 1.693 · #1a1b1c
- Aswad BlackΔE00 2.13 · #17181c
- Dark GunmetalΔE00 2.311 · #222429
- Verified BlackΔE00 2.457 · #232324
- Eerie BlackΔE00 2.487 · #1b1b1b
- Piano BlackΔE00 2.518 · #17171a
- LeadΔE00 2.544 · #212121
- Dark MoonΔE00 2.59 · #161718
- Black BeautyΔE00 2.781 · #23262b
- NeverythingΔE00 2.815 · #13181b
7 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.