HueComb

Humble Hippo

#aaaa99

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

#aaaa99

RGB

170, 170, 153

OKLCh

73.3% 0.024 107.0°

CIELAB (D50)

69.3, -2.3, 8.8

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 15% 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 46.4; on black, Lc -55.6. 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.
  • 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

2.35:1 — fails AA

Black text

8.92:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at8.92:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#787868 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

#aaaa99

protanopia

#aaaa99 · ΔE00 0.0

deuteranopia

#aaaa99 · ΔE00 0.0

tritanopia

#aaaa99 · ΔE00 0.0

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isAra Glen at ΔE00 0.865: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Ara GlenΔE00 0.865 · #adad9c
  • Amazon VineΔE00 0.878 · #abaa97
  • Frosted FernΔE00 0.88 · #a7a796
  • Wandering WillowΔE00 1.24 · #a6a897
  • Silver LustreΔE00 1.249 · #a8a798
  • Amazing BoulderΔE00 1.364 · #a9a797
  • Simply SageΔE00 1.377 · #a7a996
  • Sunset MeadowΔE00 1.432 · #a5a796
  • BackdropΔE00 1.441 · #a7a799
  • MeditationΔE00 1.719 · #a9ac9d
  • Silverado RanchΔE00 1.739 · #a7a89b
  • Chinese Tea GreenΔE00 1.75 · #acad98

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