Nuts and Bolts
#898c92
A neutral that has no useful hue — it reads as a grey. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.
Hex
#898c92
RGB
137, 140, 146
OKLCh
63.9% 0.010 264.5°
CIELAB (D50)
58.1, -0.2, -3.6
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 9 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 5% 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 61.2; on black, Lc -40.5. 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.
- tritanopia shifts it by ΔE00 5.0 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
3.37:1 — large text only
Black text
6.23:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at6.23:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#74777d 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
#898c92
protanopia
#8c8c92 · ΔE00 1.7
deuteranopia
#8b8b92 · ΔE00 1.8
tritanopia
#8b8b9a · ΔE00 5.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isBali Deep at ΔE00 1.025: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- Bali DeepΔE00 1.025 · #8a8e93
- Heavy Metal ArmourΔE00 1.25 · #888a8e
- SleetΔE00 1.259 · #8a8c94
- Stone CairnΔE00 1.29 · #888c90
- Ancient PewterΔE00 1.305 · #898d91
- Vessel GreyΔE00 1.367 · #8a8b8f
- Aluminium SilverΔE00 1.424 · #8c8d91
- Tulle GreyΔE00 1.728 · #8d9098
- Whale TailΔE00 1.981 · #86878c
- Seal GreyΔE00 2 · #8a9098
- Oslo GreyΔE00 2.078 · #878d91
- Heather FieldΔE00 2.293 · #909095
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.