HueComb

Wave

#a5ced5

A cyan that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is very light — it works as a page background, not as text.

Hex

#a5ced5

RGB

165, 206, 213

OKLCh

82.4% 0.044 209.1°

CIELAB (D50)

80.0, -12.8, -8.2

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 16 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 31% 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 30.2; on black, Lc -72.6. 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 15.5 and 16.7 and 20.1 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.70:1 — fails AA

Black text

12.39:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at12.39:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#567d84 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

#a5ced5

protanopia

#cacad5 · ΔE00 15.5

deuteranopia

#c3c3d6 · ΔE00 16.7

tritanopia

#bbbbff · ΔE00 20.1

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isPlume at ΔE00 0.568: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • PlumeΔE00 0.568 · #a5cfd5
  • CayΔE00 0.688 · #a6d0d6
  • Aqua FrostΔE00 0.882 · #a9d1d7
  • Children’s Soft BlueΔE00 1.063 · #a1ced7
  • Sky ChaseΔE00 1.3 · #a5cad1
  • Sea DewΔE00 1.445 · #9ecdd5
  • DripΔE00 1.675 · #a6ccd6
  • Light BathingΔE00 1.686 · #abd5dc
  • Grand EntranceΔE00 1.754 · #a8ccd5
  • Clear WaterΔE00 1.758 · #aad5db
  • Midwinter MistΔE00 1.809 · #a5d4dc
  • TenzingΔE00 1.874 · #9ecfd9

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