Mont Blanc

#9eb6d8

A blue that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.

Hex

#9eb6d8

RGB

158, 182, 216

OKLCh

77.0% 0.056 257.1°

CIELAB (D50)

73.1, -2.8, -20.1

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 6 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses 47% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 40.4; on black, Lc -61.8. 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.
  • protanopia and deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 9.5 and 9.3 and 6.8 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.07:1 — fails AA

Black text

10.14:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at10.14:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#627898 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

#9eb6d8

protanopia

#b4b4d8 · ΔE00 9.5

deuteranopia

#afafd8 · ΔE00 9.3

tritanopia

#ababff · ΔE00 6.8

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isFairies in America at ΔE00 1.112: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.

  • Fairies in AmericaΔE00 1.112 · #a2badb
  • Sail Into the HorizonΔE00 1.372 · #a3bbdc
  • PylonΔE00 1.403 · #9fbadf
  • Clear Lake TrailΔE00 1.592 · #a3bbda
  • Sky BlueΔE00 1.851 · #9fb9e2
  • ValourΔE00 1.869 · #a3bcdb
  • His EyesΔE00 2.05 · #9bb9e1
  • BlairΔE00 2.078 · #a1bde0
  • HonestΔE00 2.124 · #9bb8e2
  • Baltic BreamΔE00 2.144 · #9fbbda
  • Artesian PoolΔE00 2.178 · #a6bee1
  • HeartsongΔE00 2.185 · #9bafd0

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