Wolfram
#b5b6b7
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
#b5b6b7
RGB
181, 182, 183
OKLCh
77.6% 0.002 247.8°
CIELAB (D50)
74.0, -0.2, -0.6
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 15 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 39.5; on black, Lc -62.8. 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
2.03:1 — fails AA
Black text
10.34:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at10.34:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#767778 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
#b5b6b7
protanopia
#b6b6b7 · ΔE00 0.6
deuteranopia
#b6b6b7 · ΔE00 0.6
tritanopia
#b6b6ba · ΔE00 2.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isBrainstem Grey at ΔE00 0.747: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Brainstem GreyΔE00 0.747 · #b5b5b5
- Fortress GreyΔE00 0.92 · #b8b8b8
- Covered in PlatinumΔE00 1.19 · #b9baba
- SilverstoneΔE00 1.222 · #b1b3b3
- Tangled WebΔE00 1.27 · #b2b2b2
- Rocky ShelterΔE00 1.295 · #b8baba
- Baby Talk GreyΔE00 1.325 · #bababa
- PalladiumΔE00 1.508 · #b1b1b1
- Quiet GreyΔE00 1.527 · #b9babd
- Gravel FintΔE00 1.555 · #bbbbbb
- Glacier GreyΔE00 1.604 · #bbbcbd
- Silver BulletΔE00 1.646 · #b6b5b8
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.