Isolation
#494d55
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
#494d55
RGB
73, 77, 85
OKLCh
41.9% 0.014 264.4°
CIELAB (D50)
32.6, -0.3, -5.3
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 9 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 5% 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 89.2; on black, Lc -13.0. 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 6.5 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
8.48:1 — passes AA
Black text
2.48:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at8.48:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#494d55
protanopia
#4d4d55 · ΔE00 2.5
deuteranopia
#4c4c55 · ΔE00 2.6
tritanopia
#4b4b5f · ΔE00 6.5
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isAsphalt Blue at ΔE00 0.763: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Asphalt BlueΔE00 0.763 · #474c55
- Deep NightΔE00 0.939 · #494c55
- AbbeyΔE00 1.008 · #4c4f56
- Poppy SeedΔE00 1.158 · #4a4e54
- Lamp PostΔE00 1.509 · #4a4f55
- Blue SashΔE00 1.584 · #494d58
- Extinct VolcanoΔE00 1.634 · #4a4f5a
- Black RibbonΔE00 1.73 · #484c51
- SledΔE00 1.954 · #4c5055
- Sea MarinerΔE00 2.041 · #434a54
- TunaΔE00 2.092 · #46494e
- Sooty LashesΔE00 2.28 · #474d52
9 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.