Silent Film
#9fa5a5
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
#9fa5a5
RGB
159, 165, 165
OKLCh
71.7% 0.007 197.0°
CIELAB (D50)
67.3, -2.2, -0.8
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 13 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 49.1; on black, Lc -52.9. 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.
- tritanopia shifts it by ΔE00 9.9 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
2.50:1 — fails AA
Black text
8.40:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at8.40:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#727878 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
#9fa5a5
protanopia
#a4a4a5 · ΔE00 3.2
deuteranopia
#a3a3a5 · ΔE00 3.5
tritanopia
#a2a2b6 · ΔE00 9.9
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isCastlegate at ΔE00 0.499: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- CastlegateΔE00 0.499 · #a0a5a5
- StatuaryΔE00 0.606 · #9ea4a5
- Winter FlannelΔE00 1.095 · #9ca4a5
- Coastal Sea FogΔE00 1.102 · #9ea4a6
- Network GreyΔE00 1.266 · #a0a5a7
- Crown of AshΔE00 1.416 · #a1a9a9
- Shiny ArmourΔE00 1.544 · #a1a9a8
- Chance of RainΔE00 1.633 · #a0a6a9
- Grey River RockΔE00 1.657 · #99a1a1
- GrisΔE00 1.683 · #a5a9a8
- Cloud MountainΔE00 1.767 · #a4abab
- Ironbreaker MetalΔE00 1.812 · #a1a6a9
10 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.