HueComb

Greystone

#b7b9b5

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

#b7b9b5

RGB

183, 185, 181

OKLCh

78.3% 0.006 128.5°

CIELAB (D50)

74.9, -1.3, 1.8

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 22 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 38.2; on black, Lc -64.2. 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

1.98:1 — fails AA

Black text

10.62:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at10.62:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#757774 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

#b7b9b5

protanopia

#b9b9b5 · ΔE00 1.1

deuteranopia

#b8b8b5 · ΔE00 1.2

tritanopia

#b8b8bb · ΔE00 4.0

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isLunar Surface at ΔE00 0.686: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Lunar SurfaceΔE00 0.686 · #b6b9b6
  • Classic SilverΔE00 1.127 · #b9b9b4
  • Silver BonnetΔE00 1.181 · #babab5
  • Grey CloudsΔE00 1.205 · #b7b7b2
  • Quiet TimeΔE00 1.226 · #b8bcb8
  • SolsticeΔE00 1.231 · #babdb8
  • Rand MoonΔE00 1.301 · #b7b7b4
  • Fitzgerald SmokeΔE00 1.461 · #b3b6b0
  • Urban SunriseΔE00 1.481 · #bdbeba
  • Church MouseΔE00 1.488 · #b3b5af
  • Hailstorm GreyΔE00 1.524 · #bdbeb9
  • Chelsea GreyΔE00 1.582 · #b6b7b0

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