Lunar Light
#9b959c
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
#9b959c
RGB
155, 149, 156
OKLCh
67.7% 0.012 321.3°
CIELAB (D50)
62.4, 3.3, -2.9
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 3 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- 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 55.7; on black, Lc -46.1. 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 12.4 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
2.93:1 — fails AA
Black text
7.17:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at7.17:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#7b757c 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
#9b959c
protanopia
#96969c · ΔE00 3.2
deuteranopia
#97979c · ΔE00 3.4
tritanopia
#989889 · ΔE00 12.4
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isHidcote at ΔE00 0.986: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- HidcoteΔE00 0.986 · #9c949b
- Emperor’s RobeΔE00 1.11 · #99959d
- Lavender ElanΔE00 1.991 · #9d9399
- Art Nouveau GlassΔE00 2.018 · #a29aa0
- SugiliteΔE00 2.099 · #a2999f
- VictorianΔE00 2.318 · #988f97
- Lavender LakeΔE00 2.326 · #a198a2
- Aragonite GreyΔE00 2.352 · #948e96
- Artist’s ShadowΔE00 2.599 · #a1969b
- FortuneΔE00 2.603 · #9f97a3
- Regal VioletΔE00 2.658 · #a298a2
- Heather Red GreyΔE00 2.832 · #988e94
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.