Blackwater
#545663
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
#545663
RGB
84, 86, 99
OKLCh
45.6% 0.021 278.6°
CIELAB (D50)
36.7, 1.4, -7.8
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 3 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 8% 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 85.3; on black, Lc -16.7. 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
7.27:1 — passes AA
Black text
2.89:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at7.27:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#545663
protanopia
#565663 · ΔE00 1.2
deuteranopia
#555563 · ΔE00 1.2
tritanopia
#555568 · ΔE00 3.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isBlack Dragon’s Cauldron at ΔE00 0.643: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Black Dragon’s CauldronΔE00 0.643 · #545562
- Black OrchidΔE00 1.151 · #525463
- Ball GownΔE00 1.703 · #525661
- Coal TippleΔE00 2.007 · #53555e
- Dark MineralΔE00 2.434 · #515763
- Night NightΔE00 2.798 · #4f4f5e
- Odyssey GreyΔE00 2.925 · #4c4e5d
- Suede IndigoΔE00 2.962 · #585d6d
- Shearwater BlackΔE00 3.016 · #5b5b6c
- Blue LinenΔE00 3.026 · #5a5e6a
- VoyagerΔE00 3.05 · #4d5062
- Veiled VinylΔE00 3.099 · #5b5962
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.