HueComb

Rose Ashes

#b5acab

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

#b5acab

RGB

181, 172, 171

OKLCh

75.2% 0.011 25.1°

CIELAB (D50)

71.1, 3.2, 1.7

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 12 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 7% 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 43.8; on black, Lc -58.4. 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.
  • deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 5.3 and 16.1 — no green cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.22:1 — fails AA

Black text

9.45:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at9.45:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#7d7574 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

#b5acab

protanopia

#adadab · ΔE00 4.8

deuteranopia

#afafab · ΔE00 5.3

tritanopia

#b1b18b · ΔE00 16.1

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isKid Gloves at ΔE00 0.836: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Kid GlovesΔE00 0.836 · #b6aeae
  • Silver ServiceΔE00 0.896 · #b2aaaa
  • Mystical GreyΔE00 1.029 · #b5aaa9
  • Grey ScapeΔE00 1.164 · #b8b0af
  • Vintage MauveΔE00 1.566 · #baafac
  • Soft MetalΔE00 1.682 · #bab2b1
  • Smoky MountainΔE00 1.807 · #afa8a9
  • Centennial RoseΔE00 1.861 · #b3a7a6
  • London CoachΔE00 1.9 · #bab0ac
  • Antique MauveΔE00 1.914 · #bbb0b1
  • Smoky WingsΔE00 1.961 · #b2aca9
  • Slate PebbleΔE00 1.995 · #b4ada9

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