Steely Grey
#90979b
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
#90979b
RGB
144, 151, 155
OKLCh
67.2% 0.010 232.4°
CIELAB (D50)
62.0, -2.0, -3.0
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 12 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 only 7% 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 56.2; on black, Lc -45.6. 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 10.6 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
2.96:1 — fails AA
Black text
7.09:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at7.09:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#71787c 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
#90979b
protanopia
#96969b · ΔE00 3.8
deuteranopia
#95959b · ΔE00 4.1
tritanopia
#9494ad · ΔE00 10.6
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isWolverine at ΔE00 0.618: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- WolverineΔE00 0.618 · #91989d
- Grey RussianΔE00 0.854 · #8e9598
- PachydermΔE00 0.976 · #8f989d
- Radiant SilverΔE00 1.009 · #8f979d
- DustbluΔE00 1.589 · #959ba0
- BarometerΔE00 1.599 · #929899
- Boulder CreekΔE00 1.671 · #8c9496
- African GreyΔE00 1.738 · #939899
- QuarryΔE00 1.868 · #8a9399
- MoonquakeΔE00 1.93 · #8d9596
- Dusky GrouseΔE00 1.965 · #8e969e
- Flint ShardΔE00 1.993 · #8f9395
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.