HueComb

Elephant in the Room

#a8a9a8

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

#a8a9a8

RGB

168, 169, 168

OKLCh

73.4% 0.002 145.6°

CIELAB (D50)

69.1, -0.5, 0.4

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 20 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 46.5; on black, Lc -55.5. 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.
  • 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

2.36:1 — fails AA

Black text

8.91:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at8.91:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#767776 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

#a8a9a8

protanopia

#a9a9a8 · ΔE00 0.6

deuteranopia

#a9a9a8 · ΔE00 0.6

tritanopia

#a9a9ab · 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 isUniform Grey at ΔE00 0.866: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Uniform GreyΔE00 0.866 · #a8a8a8
  • Dhūsar GreyΔE00 0.919 · #aaaaaa
  • Moon LandingΔE00 0.979 · #a7a7a7
  • Quartz SandΔE00 1.151 · #a9aaab
  • QuicksilverΔE00 1.159 · #a6a6a6
  • Chain ReactionΔE00 1.263 · #a4a6a4
  • FlagstoneΔE00 1.292 · #acadad
  • NosferatuΔE00 1.341 · #a9a8a8
  • Rainy GreyΔE00 1.38 · #a5a5a5
  • Robo MasterΔE00 1.492 · #adadad
  • GrisΔE00 1.607 · #a5a9a8
  • Silver GreyΔE00 1.623 · #a8a8a4

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