Dark Secret
#3e5361
A blue that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is mid — the hardest range to put text on, either colour struggles.
Hex
#3e5361
RGB
62, 83, 97
OKLCh
43.0% 0.035 237.8°
CIELAB (D50)
34.0, -5.4, -10.9
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 8 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 37% 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 87.8; on black, Lc -14.3. 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 10.5 and 11.2 and 12.7 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
8.03:1 — passes AA
Black text
2.61:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at8.03:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#3e5361
protanopia
#515161 · ΔE00 10.5
deuteranopia
#4e4e61 · ΔE00 11.2
tritanopia
#4a4a85 · ΔE00 12.7
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isOrion Blue at ΔE00 1.013: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- Orion BlueΔE00 1.013 · #40525f
- Twilight ChimesΔE00 1.171 · #3f5363
- Sailing SafariΔE00 1.176 · #3a5161
- AlienΔE00 1.497 · #415764
- Midnight HazeΔE00 1.634 · #3e505f
- Slate WallΔE00 1.809 · #40535d
- NightfallΔE00 1.869 · #43535e
- Tetsu IronΔE00 1.915 · #455765
- Restless SeaΔE00 2.201 · #38515d
- StargazerΔE00 2.217 · #3f5865
- CelloΔE00 2.31 · #3a4e5f
- San JuanΔE00 2.314 · #445761
10 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.