Desert Dune

#b5ab9c

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

#b5ab9c

RGB

181, 171, 156

OKLCh

74.5% 0.024 78.2°

CIELAB (D50)

70.5, 1.8, 9.1

What is true of this colour, and of no other

23 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 44.7; on black, Lc -57.4. 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 5.5 and 5.7 and 14.3 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.27:1 — fails AA

Black text

9.27:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at9.27:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#7f7667 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

#b5ab9c

protanopia

#acac9c · ΔE00 5.5

deuteranopia

#aeae9c · ΔE00 5.7

tritanopia

#b0b072 · ΔE00 14.3

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isFeather Grey at ΔE00 0.807: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

Feather GreyΔE00 0.807 · #b8ad9e
Langdon DoveΔE00 0.842 · #b5ab9a
TungstenΔE00 0.897 · #b5ac9f
Fine GreigeΔE00 1.184 · #b5a998
Tapestry BeigeΔE00 1.3 · #b8ac9e
Perfect TaupeΔE00 1.372 · #b6aca0
Camel TrainΔE00 1.414 · #baae9d
Nantucket SandsΔE00 1.427 · #b4a89a
Salem ClayΔE00 1.5 · #b4ab99
Bright SepiaΔE00 1.559 · #b1aa9c
Terrace TaupeΔE00 1.58 · #b2ab9c
Marshy HabitatΔE00 1.61 · #b8aea2

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