HueComb

Cloudy Valley

#b1c6d6

A blue 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

#b1c6d6

RGB

177, 198, 214

OKLCh

81.6% 0.032 240.7°

CIELAB (D50)

78.7, -4.9, -10.6

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 19 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 32.3; on black, Lc -70.4. 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 9.6 and 10.2 and 12.3 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.76:1 — fails AA

Black text

11.92:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at11.92:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#667988 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

#b1c6d6

protanopia

#c4c4d6 · ΔE00 9.6

deuteranopia

#c0c0d6 · ΔE00 10.2

tritanopia

#bcbcff · ΔE00 12.3

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isBlissful Blue at ΔE00 0.571: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Blissful BlueΔE00 0.571 · #b2c8d8
  • Faded IndigoΔE00 1.139 · #b2c4d4
  • Big SurΔE00 1.239 · #b3cadc
  • Ruffled FeathersΔE00 1.262 · #acc2d1
  • Baby BootsΔE00 1.469 · #b7cadb
  • Boot CutΔE00 1.518 · #afc2cf
  • Caspian TideΔE00 1.619 · #aec7db
  • Barking CreekΔE00 1.625 · #adc6da
  • Dancing in the RainΔE00 1.649 · #abc5d6
  • Time TravelΔE00 1.682 · #b3c4d5
  • Life at SeaΔE00 1.71 · #afc9dc
  • Wondrous BlueΔE00 1.751 · #b8cddd

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