Graphite Black
#262a2b
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
#262a2b
RGB
38, 42, 43
OKLCh
28.1% 0.006 214.4°
CIELAB (D50)
16.7, -1.7, -1.3
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 3 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 12% 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 101.3; 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.
- tritanopia shifts it by ΔE00 8.0 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
14.50:1 — passes AA
Black text
1.45:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at14.50:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#262a2b
protanopia
#2a2a2b · ΔE00 2.7
deuteranopia
#29292b · ΔE00 2.9
tritanopia
#282835 · ΔE00 8.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isBlackadder at ΔE00 1.086: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- BlackadderΔE00 1.086 · #292c2c
- BunkerΔE00 1.765 · #292c2f
- Blue CharcoalΔE00 1.944 · #262b2f
- CinderΔE00 2.036 · #242a2e
- Cod GreyΔE00 2.243 · #2d3032
- Charleston GreenΔE00 2.521 · #232b2b
- Chromaphobic BlackΔE00 2.634 · #292929
- The EndΔE00 2.645 · #2a2a2a
- Dire WolfΔE00 2.661 · #282828
- CoatedΔE00 2.664 · #2e2f30
- Shoe WaxΔE00 2.694 · #2b2b2b
- Washed BlackΔE00 2.703 · #1f262a
9 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.