Phantom
#6e797b
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
#6e797b
RGB
110, 121, 123
OKLCh
56.8% 0.013 209.8°
CIELAB (D50)
50.0, -3.9, -2.6
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 7 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 14% 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 71.1; on black, Lc -30.5. 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.
- protanopia and deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 5.9 and 6.3 and 15.1 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
4.48:1 — large text only
Black text
4.68:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at4.68:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#6e797b is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#6e797b
protanopia
#78787b · ΔE00 5.9
deuteranopia
#76767b · ΔE00 6.3
tritanopia
#747496 · ΔE00 15.1
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isWinter Could Grey at ΔE00 0.543: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Winter Could GreyΔE00 0.543 · #6e7a7c
- Pike LakeΔE00 0.795 · #6c7779
- Ocean SwellΔE00 1.353 · #727c7e
- RhinocerosΔE00 1.552 · #727a7c
- Hidden PeakΔE00 1.58 · #727d7f
- Iron FrostΔE00 1.791 · #6f797e
- North GreyΔE00 1.838 · #6a7777
- Volcanic AshΔE00 2.078 · #6f7678
- Rolling StoneΔE00 2.241 · #6d7876
- Gotham CityΔE00 2.395 · #757c7d
- Polar PondΔE00 2.576 · #6b7b7b
- Trade SecretΔE00 2.599 · #6a7978
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.