Dark Orchestra
#251b19
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
#251b19
RGB
37, 27, 25
OKLCh
23.4% 0.016 31.3°
CIELAB (D50)
11.0, 4.8, 3.4
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- No other named colour in the set is within ΔE00 2 of it — it stands alone.
- It uses only 18% 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.
- protanopia and deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 7.3 and 8.0 and 15.5 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
16.81:1 — passes AA
Black text
1.25:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at16.81:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#251b19
protanopia
#1c1c19 · ΔE00 7.3
deuteranopia
#1e1e19 · ΔE00 8.0
tritanopia
#202000 · ΔE00 15.5
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isUsed Oil at ΔE00 2.292: between 2 and 5 — clearly two colours when compared, easily mistaken from memory. What the numbers mean.
- Used OilΔE00 2.292 · #231712
- Kālā BlackΔE00 2.477 · #201819
- Black UmberΔE00 2.867 · #1f1916
- WeathervaneΔE00 3.046 · #2c201a
- Tetsu-Guro BlackΔE00 3.203 · #281a14
- Scandinavian LiquoriceΔE00 3.364 · #1a1110
- Bighorn SheepΔE00 3.379 · #20120e
- Kenpōzome BlackΔE00 3.415 · #2e211b
- Bats CloakΔE00 3.71 · #1f1518
- Velvet BlackΔE00 3.795 · #241f20
- Gold BlackΔE00 3.847 · #2a2424
- Wood BarkΔE00 3.882 · #302621
8 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.