Magnetic
#b2b5af
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
#b2b5af
RGB
178, 181, 175
OKLCh
76.9% 0.009 128.6°
CIELAB (D50)
73.3, -1.9, 2.7
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 20 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 40.5; on black, Lc -61.7. 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.
- tritanopia shifts it by ΔE00 5.9 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
2.07:1 — fails AA
Black text
10.12:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at10.12:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#757872 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#b2b5af
protanopia
#b5b5af · ΔE00 1.6
deuteranopia
#b4b4af · ΔE00 1.7
tritanopia
#b4b4b8 · ΔE00 5.9
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isFitzgerald Smoke at ΔE00 0.273: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Fitzgerald SmokeΔE00 0.273 · #b3b6b0
- Church MouseΔE00 0.518 · #b3b5af
- Fynbos LeafΔE00 1.189 · #aeb1ac
- Chelsea GreyΔE00 1.278 · #b6b7b0
- FossilisedΔE00 1.324 · #b6b8b0
- Old Grey MareΔE00 1.464 · #b4b6ad
- Plymouth GreyΔE00 1.529 · #b0b1ac
- Quincy GraniteΔE00 1.588 · #b5b5af
- Blue FoxΔE00 1.639 · #acb0a9
- GreystoneΔE00 1.647 · #b7b9b5
- Urban PuttyΔE00 1.684 · #b0b1a9
- SleepyΔE00 1.686 · #b2b8b1
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.