HueComb

Silver Fox

#bdbcc4

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

#bdbcc4

RGB

189, 188, 196

OKLCh

79.8% 0.011 291.9°

CIELAB (D50)

76.5, 1.5, -3.9

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 17 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 35.7; on black, Lc -66.8. 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

1.88:1 — fails AA

Black text

11.15:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at11.15:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#77767d 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

#bdbcc4

protanopia

#bcbcc4 · ΔE00 0.5

deuteranopia

#bcbcc4 · ΔE00 0.6

tritanopia

#bcbcc1 · ΔE00 1.8

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isGreat White at ΔE00 0.688: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Great WhiteΔE00 0.688 · #bdbdc6
  • GhostΔE00 0.781 · #c0bfc7
  • Mithril SilverΔE00 1.186 · #bbbbc1
  • MoonwalkΔE00 1.218 · #bebec4
  • Titanium ManΔE00 1.304 · #bcb9c0
  • SilverwareΔE00 1.355 · #b8b8bf
  • Lavender OilΔE00 1.404 · #c0c0ca
  • Pied Wagtail GreyΔE00 1.434 · #bebdc2
  • PensiveΔE00 1.59 · #c2c1cb
  • Rocket ManΔE00 1.635 · #bebec3
  • Best in ShowΔE00 1.653 · #b9b7bd
  • Streamlined GreyΔE00 1.666 · #b9bac0

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