HueComb

Shadow of the Colossus

#a3a2a1

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

#a3a2a1

RGB

163, 162, 161

OKLCh

71.3% 0.002 67.8°

CIELAB (D50)

66.7, 0.2, 0.7

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 26 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 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 49.9; on black, Lc -52.0. 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.
  • All three dichromacies see it as very nearly the same colour you do: its hue is not the part carrying its identity.

Text on this colour

White text

2.55:1 — fails AA

Black text

8.24:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at8.24:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#777776 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

#a3a2a1

protanopia

#a2a2a1 · ΔE00 0.6

deuteranopia

#a2a2a1 · ΔE00 0.6

tritanopia

#a2a29e · ΔE00 2.1

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isSleepy Kitten at ΔE00 0.626: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Sleepy KittenΔE00 0.626 · #a2a1a1
  • Charmed ChaliceΔE00 0.681 · #a1a1a0
  • Grey of DarknessΔE00 0.73 · #a2a2a2
  • Artificial Intelligence GreyΔE00 0.81 · #a1a1a1
  • Elemental GreyΔE00 0.885 · #a0a09f
  • Grayve-YardΔE00 0.936 · #a1a19f
  • Rainy GreyΔE00 1.12 · #a5a5a5
  • Smokey WingsΔE00 1.181 · #a7a5a3
  • Cold GreyΔE00 1.209 · #9f9f9f
  • QuicksilverΔE00 1.359 · #a6a6a6
  • Hugh’s HueΔE00 1.36 · #9fa09f
  • Su-Nezumi GreyΔE00 1.39 · #9fa0a0

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