Walkway
#a3999c
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
#a3999c
RGB
163, 153, 156
OKLCh
69.2% 0.013 357.2°
CIELAB (D50)
64.2, 4.2, -0.2
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 6 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- 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 53.4; on black, Lc -48.5. 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 5.2 and 5.6 and 18.9 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
2.77:1 — fails AA
Black text
7.59:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at7.59:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#7e7477 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
#a3999c
protanopia
#9a9a9c · ΔE00 5.2
deuteranopia
#9c9c9c · ΔE00 5.6
tritanopia
#9e9e78 · ΔE00 18.9
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isSugar Tree at ΔE00 1.142: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- Sugar TreeΔE00 1.142 · #a2999a
- Artist’s ShadowΔE00 1.379 · #a1969b
- SugiliteΔE00 1.504 · #a2999f
- Heather PlumeΔE00 1.547 · #a39699
- Art Nouveau GlassΔE00 1.712 · #a29aa0
- Violet DawnΔE00 1.807 · #a89b9c
- Warm AsphaltΔE00 2.129 · #9c9395
- NobelΔE00 2.149 · #a99d9d
- LauraΔE00 2.233 · #a6979a
- Sunrise Over TahitiΔE00 2.269 · #a69799
- Boiling MudΔE00 2.277 · #a59c9b
- Lavender ElanΔE00 2.367 · #9d9399
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.