HueComb

Alpine Air

#a9b4a9

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

#a9b4a9

RGB

169, 180, 169

OKLCh

75.8% 0.020 145.4°

CIELAB (D50)

72.2, -5.5, 4.2

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 13 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 8% 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 42.1; on black, Lc -60.1. 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 5.3 and 5.5 and 17.3 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.15:1 — fails AA

Black text

9.79:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at9.79:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#6f796f 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

#a9b4a9

protanopia

#b3b3a9 · ΔE00 5.3

deuteranopia

#b1b1a9 · ΔE00 5.5

tritanopia

#afafc8 · ΔE00 17.3

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isSigh of Relief at ΔE00 0.718: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Sigh of ReliefΔE00 0.718 · #abb6ac
  • Forever GreenΔE00 0.945 · #aab4a7
  • Blue FescueΔE00 1.196 · #adb6ac
  • DreamcatcherΔE00 1.374 · #a5b2a9
  • Montezuma HillsΔE00 1.47 · #a6b2a4
  • Southern PineΔE00 1.595 · #acb4ab
  • AquatoneΔE00 1.676 · #a6b5a9
  • Marine GreyΔE00 1.681 · #a5b2aa
  • Graceful GreenΔE00 1.791 · #acb7a8
  • Gaelic GardenΔE00 1.862 · #a5b3ab
  • Slate StoneΔE00 1.881 · #acb4ac
  • Morning DewΔE00 1.892 · #b0b9ac

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