Arsenic
#3b444b
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
#3b444b
RGB
59, 68, 75
OKLCh
38.1% 0.017 241.4°
CIELAB (D50)
28.2, -2.5, -5.5
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 7 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 19% 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 93.1; on black, Lc -9.4. 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 5.4 and 5.8 and 12.3 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
9.93:1 — passes AA
Black text
2.11:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at9.93:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#3b444b
protanopia
#43434b · ΔE00 5.4
deuteranopia
#42424b · ΔE00 5.8
tritanopia
#40405e · ΔE00 12.3
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isCool Operator’s Overalls at ΔE00 1.145: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- Cool Operator’s OverallsΔE00 1.145 · #384248
- NightshadeΔE00 1.494 · #3c464b
- Winter WayΔE00 1.501 · #3e474c
- Chimney SmokeΔE00 1.692 · #3c4247
- Alpine Duck GreyΔE00 1.79 · #40464d
- Medium Gunship GreyΔE00 1.927 · #3f4952
- Diamond GreyΔE00 1.974 · #3e474b
- Foggy NightΔE00 2.001 · #40494e
- Lights OutΔE00 2.128 · #3d474b
- Midnight HourΔE00 2.158 · #3b484f
- Astrogranite DebrisΔE00 2.296 · #3b424c
- FerryΔE00 2.314 · #383e44
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.