Deep Night
#494c55
A neutral that has no useful hue — it reads as a grey. It is mid — the hardest range to put text on, either colour struggles.
Hex
#494c55
RGB
73, 76, 85
OKLCh
41.7% 0.015 271.0°
CIELAB (D50)
32.3, 0.3, -5.8
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 6 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 6% 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 89.5; on black, Lc -12.7. 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
8.58:1 — passes AA
Black text
2.45:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at8.58:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#494c55
protanopia
#4c4c55 · ΔE00 1.9
deuteranopia
#4b4b55 · ΔE00 2.0
tritanopia
#4b4b5c · ΔE00 4.9
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isIsolation at ΔE00 0.939: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- IsolationΔE00 0.939 · #494d55
- Blue SashΔE00 1.066 · #494d58
- Asphalt BlueΔE00 1.158 · #474c55
- AbbeyΔE00 1.479 · #4c4f56
- Extinct VolcanoΔE00 1.571 · #4a4f5a
- Poppy SeedΔE00 1.986 · #4a4e54
- Deep MysteryΔE00 2.024 · #494c59
- Downing StreetΔE00 2.159 · #4a4b57
- Sea MarinerΔE00 2.324 · #434a54
- ChurchillΔE00 2.33 · #4d4d58
- Lamp PostΔE00 2.422 · #4a4f55
- Midnight SkyΔE00 2.429 · #424753
10 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.