Off the Beaten Path
#534c4b
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
#534c4b
RGB
83, 76, 75
OKLCh
42.3% 0.009 27.3°
CIELAB (D50)
33.0, 2.9, 1.7
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 8 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 89.0; on black, Lc -13.3. 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.
- tritanopia shifts it by ΔE00 15.7 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
8.39:1 — passes AA
Black text
2.50:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at8.39:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#534c4b
protanopia
#4d4d4b · ΔE00 4.4
deuteranopia
#4e4e4b · ΔE00 4.8
tritanopia
#50502e · ΔE00 15.7
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isMatterhorn at ΔE00 0.678: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- MatterhornΔE00 0.678 · #524b4b
- Underground CivilizationΔE00 1.223 · #524b4c
- EmperorΔE00 1.543 · #50494a
- Keshizumi CinderΔE00 1.801 · #524e4d
- MortarΔE00 1.844 · #565051
- Willow WoodΔE00 1.867 · #58504d
- Périgord TruffleΔE00 1.907 · #524a46
- Berry BrownΔE00 2 · #544f4c
- Espresso MacchiatoΔE00 2.088 · #4f4744
- Dark CavernΔE00 2.168 · #55504d
- Black EleganceΔE00 2.261 · #50484a
- Charadon GraniteΔE00 2.346 · #504d4c
10 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.