Machinery
#9999aa
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
#9999aa
RGB
153, 153, 170
OKLCh
68.8% 0.025 285.7°
CIELAB (D50)
63.6, 2.6, -8.9
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 6 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 14% 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 54.0; on black, Lc -47.9. 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
2.80:1 — fails AA
Black text
7.49:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at7.49:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#757586 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
#9999aa
protanopia
#9999aa · ΔE00 0.0
deuteranopia
#9999aa · ΔE00 0.0
tritanopia
#9999aa · ΔE00 0.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isLavender Ash at ΔE00 0.954: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Lavender AshΔE00 0.954 · #9998a7
- AcanthusΔE00 1.414 · #9899a7
- Ash VioletΔE00 1.541 · #9695a4
- AdhesionΔE00 1.637 · #9e9cab
- Bright ManateeΔE00 1.695 · #979aaa
- Too Big to WhaleΔE00 1.769 · #9596a4
- Angry GargoyleΔE00 2.125 · #9799a6
- Dame DignityΔE00 2.163 · #999ba8
- Santas GreyΔE00 2.173 · #9fa0b1
- Colorado PeakΔE00 2.181 · #9c9ba7
- Wet AsphaltΔE00 2.487 · #989cab
- Screen TestΔE00 2.822 · #999eb0
10 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.