Stone Cold
#555555
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
#555555
RGB
85, 85, 85
OKLCh
45.0% 0.000 89.9°
CIELAB (D50)
36.1, 0.0, 0.0
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 13 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 85.9; on black, Lc -16.1. 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.
- 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
7.46:1 — passes AA
Black text
2.82:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at7.46:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#555555
protanopia
#555555 · ΔE00 0.0
deuteranopia
#555555 · ΔE00 0.0
tritanopia
#555555 · ΔE00 0.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isBrilliant Liquorice at ΔE00 0.351: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Brilliant LiquoriceΔE00 0.351 · #545454
- Carbon CopyΔE00 0.953 · #545554
- Shadow MountainΔE00 1.061 · #585858
- Black SpaceΔE00 1.125 · #545354
- CavernousΔE00 1.294 · #515252
- Jet FuelΔE00 1.346 · #575654
- Sumi InkΔE00 1.383 · #595857
- Davy’s GreyΔE00 1.478 · #535554
- Charcoal DustΔE00 1.71 · #595758
- Fiftieth Shade of GreyΔE00 1.744 · #505050
- Blank SpaceΔE00 1.774 · #505150
- CelluloidΔE00 1.836 · #515153
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.