Chorus of Elephants
#8e8987
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
#8e8987
RGB
142, 137, 135
OKLCh
63.4% 0.007 43.3°
CIELAB (D50)
57.5, 1.6, 1.8
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 5 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- 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 62.1; on black, Lc -39.6. 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 9.8 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
3.45:1 — large text only
Black text
6.08:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at6.08:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#7b7674 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
#8e8987
protanopia
#8a8a87 · ΔE00 2.9
deuteranopia
#8a8a87 · ΔE00 3.2
tritanopia
#8b8b76 · ΔE00 9.8
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isLight Shōchi Black at ΔE00 0.867: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Light Shōchi BlackΔE00 0.867 · #8e8887
- Detective CoatΔE00 1.186 · #8b8685
- Pewter RingΔE00 1.77 · #8a8886
- Creek BendΔE00 1.916 · #928c87
- Antique SilverΔE00 1.927 · #918e8c
- Plum SmokeΔE00 2.056 · #928e8e
- Mourning DoveΔE00 2.1 · #928d88
- ExcelsiorΔE00 2.242 · #908b85
- Falcon GreyΔE00 2.298 · #898887
- BygoneΔE00 2.306 · #918e8a
- Mine RockΔE00 2.344 · #8e8583
- Rocky RidgeΔE00 2.359 · #918c86
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.