Ghost Writer
#bcb7ad
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
#bcb7ad
RGB
188, 183, 173
OKLCh
78.1% 0.015 84.6°
CIELAB (D50)
74.6, 0.5, 5.8
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 27 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 9% 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 38.7; on black, Lc -63.7. 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 8.2 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
2.00:1 — fails AA
Black text
10.52:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at10.52:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#7b766d 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
#bcb7ad
protanopia
#b8b8ad · ΔE00 2.8
deuteranopia
#b8b8ad · ΔE00 2.9
tritanopia
#b9b99b · ΔE00 8.2
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isGlasgow Fog at ΔE00 0.268: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Glasgow FogΔE00 0.268 · #bdb8ae
- Reclaimed WoodΔE00 0.853 · #bab6ab
- Row HouseΔE00 1.093 · #bfb8ad
- Powered RockΔE00 1.143 · #bbb7ab
- ViaductΔE00 1.242 · #c1bbb1
- AshesΔE00 1.388 · #b8b5ad
- Xiao Long Bao DumplingΔE00 1.407 · #bcb7b0
- Soulful GreyΔE00 1.431 · #b8b5aa
- Cloud Over LondonΔE00 1.489 · #c2bcb1
- Anew GreyΔE00 1.521 · #beb6ab
- City DwellerΔE00 1.567 · #c0b9ac
- Play on GreyΔE00 1.581 · #bab6a9
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.