Ebony
#313337
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
#313337
RGB
49, 51, 55
OKLCh
32.1% 0.008 264.5°
CIELAB (D50)
21.2, -0.2, -2.9
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 15 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 98.7; 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
12.66:1 — passes AA
Black text
1.66:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at12.66:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#313337
protanopia
#333337 · ΔE00 1.4
deuteranopia
#323237 · ΔE00 1.5
tritanopia
#32323c · ΔE00 4.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isEbony Clay at ΔE00 0.321: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Ebony ClayΔE00 0.321 · #323438
- Dark Kettle BlackΔE00 0.764 · #333438
- Hawk’s EyeΔE00 0.966 · #34363a
- StilettoΔE00 1.368 · #323235
- MetaliseΔE00 1.441 · #34373c
- Granite BlackΔE00 1.534 · #313238
- Tap ShoeΔE00 1.592 · #2f3032
- VulcanΔE00 1.613 · #36383c
- Tribecca CornerΔE00 1.686 · #33373b
- Black of NightΔE00 1.726 · #323639
- Black CatΔE00 1.795 · #2e2f31
- Cobalt NightΔE00 1.798 · #353739
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.