HueComb

Tangled Web

#b2b2b2

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

#b2b2b2

RGB

178, 178, 178

OKLCh

76.4% 0.000 89.9°

CIELAB (D50)

72.6, 0.0, 0.0

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 14 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 41.6; on black, Lc -60.7. 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

2.12:1 — fails AA

Black text

9.90:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at9.90:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#777777 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

#b2b2b2

protanopia

#b2b2b2 · ΔE00 0.0

deuteranopia

#b2b2b2 · ΔE00 0.0

tritanopia

#b2b2b2 · 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 isPalladium at ΔE00 0.278: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • PalladiumΔE00 0.278 · #b1b1b1
  • Brainstem GreyΔE00 0.824 · #b5b5b5
  • SilverstoneΔE00 1.107 · #b1b3b3
  • Warm ShaleΔE00 1.162 · #b2b1af
  • WolframΔE00 1.27 · #b5b6b7
  • Robo MasterΔE00 1.404 · #adadad
  • Industrial AgeΔE00 1.452 · #aeadad
  • Aluminium SkyΔE00 1.462 · #adafaf
  • FlagstoneΔE00 1.57 · #acadad
  • Praise GivingΔE00 1.633 · #b2b1ae
  • Fortress GreyΔE00 1.636 · #b8b8b8
  • Harbour FogΔE00 1.814 · #afb1b4

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