Ashes to Ashes
#bbb3a2
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
#bbb3a2
RGB
187, 179, 162
OKLCh
76.9% 0.025 85.8°
CIELAB (D50)
73.3, 0.8, 9.8
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 16% 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 40.7; on black, Lc -61.6. 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.
- tritanopia shifts it by ΔE00 11.5 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
2.08:1 — fails AA
Black text
10.08:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at10.08:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#7e7666 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
#bbb3a2
protanopia
#b4b4a2 · ΔE00 4.3
deuteranopia
#b5b5a2 · ΔE00 4.5
tritanopia
#b7b782 · ΔE00 11.5
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isSaturn Grey at ΔE00 0.974: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Saturn GreyΔE00 0.974 · #b8b19f
- Silver TaupeΔE00 1.081 · #b8b2a2
- Dusty AtticΔE00 1.155 · #bfb6a3
- TeaΔE00 1.249 · #bfb5a2
- Pewter PatterΔE00 1.397 · #bab4a6
- Camping TentΔE00 1.4 · #b6afa0
- Analytical GreyΔE00 1.433 · #bfb6a7
- Ghost TownΔE00 1.526 · #beb6a8
- StonelakeΔE00 1.558 · #bab1a3
- SophisticationΔE00 1.669 · #bfb5a6
- Jogging PathΔE00 1.682 · #c0b9a9
- Bright LoamΔE00 1.855 · #c1b9aa
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.