HueComb

Pale Whale

#b6d3df

A cyan that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is very light — it works as a page background, not as text.

Hex

#b6d3df

RGB

182, 211, 223

OKLCh

84.9% 0.035 224.7°

CIELAB (D50)

82.7, -8.1, -9.4

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 35% 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 26.0; on black, Lc -77.0. 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 12.2 and 13.1 and 16.2 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.57:1 — fails AA

Black text

13.37:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at13.37:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#607b86 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

#b6d3df

protanopia

#d0d0df · ΔE00 12.2

deuteranopia

#cbcbe0 · ΔE00 13.1

tritanopia

#c5c5ff · ΔE00 16.2

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isMillstream at ΔE00 0.906: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • MillstreamΔE00 0.906 · #b9d4de
  • Shrubby LichenΔE00 0.906 · #b5d1db
  • Early JuneΔE00 1.183 · #b1d2df
  • Bridgewater BayΔE00 1.213 · #bcd7e2
  • Foamy SurfΔE00 1.385 · #b3d4df
  • Midsummer’s DreamΔE00 1.388 · #b4d0d9
  • Stencil BlueΔE00 1.421 · #b4ceda
  • Glacial StreamΔE00 1.446 · #bcd8e2
  • Breezy BlueΔE00 1.458 · #bad9e5
  • Lingerie BlueΔE00 1.592 · #b4d6e5
  • Rain CheckΔE00 1.6 · #b6d5de
  • MudraΔE00 1.601 · #b8d0da

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