Easter Egg

#8e97c7

A blue that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.

Hex

#8e97c7

RGB

142, 151, 199

OKLCh

68.7% 0.071 276.1°

CIELAB (D50)

63.1, 5.0, -26.1

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 7 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses 43% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 54.4; on black, Lc -47.4. 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

2.84:1 — fails AA

Black text

7.40:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at7.40:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#6c74a2 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.

Try it against your own background

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#8e97c7

protanopia

#9696c7 · ΔE00 3.0

deuteranopia

#9494c7 · ΔE00 2.8

tritanopia

#9393d8 · ΔE00 3.3

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isFast Velvet at ΔE00 1.074: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.

  • Fast VelvetΔE00 1.074 · #8b94c7
  • Corfu SkyΔE00 1.4 · #8993c3
  • Pale IrisΔE00 1.611 · #8895c5
  • Hair RibbonΔE00 1.636 · #939cc9
  • Sweet WilliamΔE00 1.741 · #8892c1
  • Velvet RobeΔE00 1.826 · #939dcc
  • PHP PurpleΔE00 1.851 · #8892bf
  • Safflowerish SkyΔE00 2.64 · #8491c3
  • Blue HeronΔE00 2.703 · #939ec5
  • Bailey BellsΔE00 2.997 · #8a8ec9
  • Blue HyacinthΔE00 3.05 · #8394c5
  • Bluebell FrostΔE00 3.081 · #9999cc

12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.