HueComb

Pedigrey

#8f8e8c

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

#8f8e8c

RGB

143, 142, 140

OKLCh

64.7% 0.003 84.6°

CIELAB (D50)

59.1, 0.1, 1.2

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 15 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 60.1; on black, Lc -41.6. 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.
  • 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

3.27:1 — large text only

Black text

6.42:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at6.42:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#787775 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

#8f8e8c

protanopia

#8e8e8c · ΔE00 0.6

deuteranopia

#8e8e8c · ΔE00 0.6

tritanopia

#8e8e89 · ΔE00 2.1

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isAntique Silver at ΔE00 1.154: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.

  • Antique SilverΔE00 1.154 · #918e8c
  • More Than a WeekΔE00 1.24 · #8d8d8d
  • Letter GreyΔE00 1.314 · #8f8f8b
  • BygoneΔE00 1.419 · #918e8a
  • Cool AshesΔE00 1.494 · #929291
  • TinΔE00 1.537 · #919191
  • Wet WeatherΔE00 1.569 · #929090
  • Wild DoveΔE00 1.604 · #8b8c89
  • Grant GreyΔE00 1.631 · #918f8a
  • Stieglitz SilverΔE00 1.735 · #8d8f8e
  • NickelΔE00 1.77 · #929292
  • Grey ShingleΔE00 1.796 · #949392

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