HueComb

Walrus

#999b9b

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

#999b9b

RGB

153, 155, 155

OKLCh

68.8% 0.002 197.1°

CIELAB (D50)

63.8, -0.7, -0.3

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 21 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 53.8; on black, Lc -48.0. 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

2.79:1 — fails AA

Black text

7.52:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at7.52:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#757777 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

#999b9b

protanopia

#9b9b9b · ΔE00 1.2

deuteranopia

#9a9a9b · ΔE00 1.2

tritanopia

#9a9aa1 · ΔE00 3.9

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isBasalt at ΔE00 0.935: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • BasaltΔE00 0.935 · #989998
  • HydrargyrumΔE00 1.133 · #9b9b9b
  • Dark LimestoneΔE00 1.157 · #989a98
  • Codex GreyΔE00 1.213 · #9c9c9c
  • Pencil SketchΔE00 1.223 · #999d9e
  • Million GreyΔE00 1.229 · #999999
  • Smoky ToneΔE00 1.229 · #9d9e9d
  • Metal ChiΔE00 1.256 · #9c9c9b
  • Stone MasonΔE00 1.337 · #959897
  • WaitingΔE00 1.361 · #9d9d9d
  • Spanish GreyΔE00 1.389 · #989898
  • Mortar GreyΔE00 1.49 · #9e9f9e

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