Dampened Black
#4a4747
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
#4a4747
RGB
74, 71, 71
OKLCh
40.1% 0.004 17.3°
CIELAB (D50)
30.5, 1.3, 0.5
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 11 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it — this part of the space is crowded, and the names here are finer distinctions than most people make.
- It uses almost none of the chroma available here: this is a grey with a trace of hue rather than a colour.
- As text on white it measures APCA Lc 91.2; on black, Lc -11.1. 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 7.1 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
9.20:1 — passes AA
Black text
2.28:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at9.20:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#4a4747
protanopia
#474747 · ΔE00 2.0
deuteranopia
#484847 · ΔE00 2.1
tritanopia
#48483d · ΔE00 7.1
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isPrivate Black at ΔE00 0.676: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Private BlackΔE00 0.676 · #4c4949
- Bastion GreyΔE00 1.016 · #4d4a4a
- Deep EarthΔE00 1.427 · #4d4b4b
- Black BeanΔE00 1.476 · #4e4b4a
- OnyxΔE00 1.727 · #464544
- Greenish BlackΔE00 1.751 · #454445
- Shady CharacterΔE00 1.81 · #4c4b4c
- Warm OnyxΔE00 1.899 · #4c4845
- Pig IronΔE00 1.918 · #484848
- CatwalkΔE00 1.983 · #4a4649
- Wood CharcoalΔE00 1.997 · #464646
- Black TieΔE00 2.004 · #464647
10 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.