Chill of the Night

#256d8d

A blue that is muted. It is mid — the hardest range to put text on, either colour struggles.

Hex

#256d8d

RGB

37, 109, 141

OKLCh

50.5% 0.086 231.4°

CIELAB (D50)

42.7, -14.4, -24.5

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 9 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses 84% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 78.5; on black, Lc -23.3. 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 19.2 and 18.4 and 16.8 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

5.75:1 — passes AA

Black text

3.65:1 — large text only

White text is the better of the two at5.75:1. That is enough for body text.

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#256d8d

protanopia

#68688d · ΔE00 19.2

deuteranopia

#5f5f8e · ΔE00 18.4

tritanopia

#5353d6 · ΔE00 16.8

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isFaience at ΔE00 0.611: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • FaienceΔE00 0.611 · #2a6d8b
  • Ocean CallΔE00 1.282 · #2b6c8e
  • Saxony BlueΔE00 1.37 · #216b88
  • Sea GoddessΔE00 1.581 · #216987
  • BondiΔE00 1.781 · #16698c
  • Pure Light BlueΔE00 1.805 · #036c91
  • Big Ocean WaveΔE00 1.849 · #34708f
  • Tropic SeaΔE00 1.866 · #016f92
  • CopacabanaΔE00 1.963 · #006c8d
  • CairnsΔE00 2.124 · #0a6b92
  • Living StreamΔE00 2.156 · #37708c
  • Techno BlueΔE00 2.19 · #006b8b

10 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.