HueComb

Ultimate Grey

#a9a8a9

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

#a9a8a9

RGB

169, 168, 169

OKLCh

73.3% 0.002 325.6°

CIELAB (D50)

69.0, 0.5, -0.4

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 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 46.7; on black, Lc -55.3. 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

2.37:1 — fails AA

Black text

8.86:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at8.86:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#777677 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

#a9a8a9

protanopia

#a8a8a9 · ΔE00 0.6

deuteranopia

#a8a8a9 · ΔE00 0.6

tritanopia

#a8a8a6 · 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 isNosferatu at ΔE00 0.548: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • NosferatuΔE00 0.548 · #a9a8a8
  • Uniform GreyΔE00 0.845 · #a8a8a8
  • Moon LandingΔE00 0.921 · #a7a7a7
  • Dhūsar GreyΔE00 0.977 · #aaaaaa
  • QuicksilverΔE00 1.076 · #a6a6a6
  • Quartz SandΔE00 1.218 · #a9aaab
  • Rainy GreyΔE00 1.282 · #a5a5a5
  • ClassyΔE00 1.334 · #aeacad
  • Duct Tape GreyΔE00 1.399 · #aeacac
  • Industrial AgeΔE00 1.525 · #aeadad
  • Robo MasterΔE00 1.598 · #adadad
  • Cathedral GreyΔE00 1.678 · #aba9a7

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