Professor Plum
#393540
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
#393540
RGB
57, 53, 64
OKLCh
33.7% 0.020 301.9°
CIELAB (D50)
22.9, 3.8, -6.2
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 4 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 11% 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 97.4; 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 8.7 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
11.95:1 — passes AA
Black text
1.76:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at11.95:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#393540
protanopia
#353540 · ΔE00 2.5
deuteranopia
#363640 · ΔE00 2.6
tritanopia
#373735 · ΔE00 8.7
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isPersian Prince at ΔE00 0.608: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Persian PrinceΔE00 0.608 · #38343e
- Ship GreyΔE00 1.706 · #3e3a44
- Witches CauldronΔE00 1.879 · #35343f
- Deep WellΔE00 1.937 · #33313b
- RevolverΔE00 2.162 · #37363f
- Black MarlinΔE00 2.205 · #383740
- Zeus PalaceΔE00 2.497 · #3c343d
- Sceptre BlueΔE00 2.538 · #353542
- Blue GraphiteΔE00 2.635 · #3a383f
- Wolf’s BaneΔE00 2.77 · #3d343f
- Royal CoronationΔE00 2.905 · #3e3542
- MartiniqueΔE00 2.99 · #3c3748
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.