HueComb

Statuary

#9ea4a5

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

#9ea4a5

RGB

158, 164, 165

OKLCh

71.4% 0.007 208.8°

CIELAB (D50)

66.9, -2.1, -1.3

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 14 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 6% 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 49.6; on black, Lc -52.4. 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 9.8 — no blue cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.53:1 — fails AA

Black text

8.31:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at8.31:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#727879 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

#9ea4a5

protanopia

#a3a3a5 · ΔE00 3.3

deuteranopia

#a2a2a5 · ΔE00 3.5

tritanopia

#a1a1b5 · ΔE00 9.8

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isCoastal Sea Fog at ΔE00 0.533: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Coastal Sea FogΔE00 0.533 · #9ea4a6
  • Silent FilmΔE00 0.606 · #9fa5a5
  • CastlegateΔE00 0.753 · #a0a5a5
  • Network GreyΔE00 0.887 · #a0a5a7
  • Winter FlannelΔE00 0.966 · #9ca4a5
  • Chance of RainΔE00 1.233 · #a0a6a9
  • Tank HeadΔE00 1.314 · #9aa0a2
  • Ironbreaker MetalΔE00 1.442 · #a1a6a9
  • Prehistoric StoneΔE00 1.589 · #9aa0a3
  • Grey River RockΔE00 1.589 · #99a1a1
  • Baby SealΔE00 1.673 · #a1a5a8
  • Crown of AshΔE00 1.77 · #a1a9a9

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