HueComb

Zen Pebble

#bab8ad

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

#bab8ad

RGB

186, 184, 173

OKLCh

78.1% 0.015 98.3°

CIELAB (D50)

74.7, -0.7, 5.9

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 18 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 10% 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 38.5; on black, Lc -63.8. 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

1.99:1 — fails AA

Black text

10.55:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at10.55:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#79776d 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

#bab8ad

protanopia

#b8b8ad · ΔE00 1.1

deuteranopia

#b9b9ad · ΔE00 1.1

tritanopia

#b9b9a6 · ΔE00 3.4

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isDusty Sand at ΔE00 0.845: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Dusty SandΔE00 0.845 · #bdbaae
  • Soulful GreyΔE00 0.925 · #b8b5aa
  • Arid PlainsΔE00 1.086 · #b6b4a9
  • Powered RockΔE00 1.091 · #bbb7ab
  • Reclaimed WoodΔE00 1.157 · #bab6ab
  • Play on GreyΔE00 1.321 · #bab6a9
  • Hurricane HazeΔE00 1.456 · #bdbbad
  • Simple GreyΔE00 1.485 · #babaad
  • Silver TinselΔE00 1.486 · #b6b3a9
  • Stone MillΔE00 1.65 · #b6b7ad
  • AshesΔE00 1.69 · #b8b5ad
  • GreenwoodΔE00 1.72 · #bcbaab

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