HueComb

Ash

#bebaa7

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

#bebaa7

RGB

190, 186, 167

OKLCh

78.7% 0.027 97.2°

CIELAB (D50)

75.5, -1.0, 10.2

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 37.5; on black, Lc -64.9. 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 5.9 — no blue cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.95:1 — fails AA

Black text

10.77:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at10.77:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#7b7765 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

#bebaa7

protanopia

#babaa7 · ΔE00 2.1

deuteranopia

#bbbba7 · ΔE00 2.1

tritanopia

#bcbc98 · ΔE00 5.9

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isFeathers of a Dove at ΔE00 1.008: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.

  • Feathers of a DoveΔE00 1.008 · #bcb7a5
  • Historical RuinsΔE00 1.188 · #bfb9a7
  • ApparitionΔE00 1.217 · #c2bca9
  • Koala BearΔE00 1.246 · #bdb7a3
  • Evening DoveΔE00 1.337 · #c2bead
  • Jackson AntiqueΔE00 1.348 · #c3bda9
  • Candle BarkΔE00 1.373 · #c3bdaa
  • White PrimerΔE00 1.499 · #c3bdab
  • Wells GreyΔE00 1.508 · #b9b5a4
  • PelicanΔE00 1.514 · #c1bcac
  • Gentle SoulΔE00 1.558 · #c3bfae
  • TanaΔE00 1.585 · #b8b5a1

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