HueComb

Nimbus Cloud

#c8c8cc

A neutral that has no useful hue — it reads as a grey. It is very light — it works as a page background, not as text.

Hex

#c8c8cc

RGB

200, 200, 204

OKLCh

83.4% 0.005 286.3°

CIELAB (D50)

80.7, 0.6, -2.0

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 19 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 6% 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 29.4; on black, Lc -73.5. 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

1.67:1 — fails AA

Black text

12.59:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at12.59:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#76767a 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

#c8c8cc

protanopia

#c8c8cc · ΔE00 0.0

deuteranopia

#c8c8cc · ΔE00 0.0

tritanopia

#c8c8cc · ΔE00 0.0

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isCentre Stage at ΔE00 0.572: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Centre StageΔE00 0.572 · #c8c7cb
  • Shining SilverΔE00 1.047 · #c7c7c9
  • Urban GreyΔE00 1.113 · #cacacc
  • Runefang SteelΔE00 1.131 · #c4c4c7
  • Dusty GreyΔE00 1.167 · #cdccd0
  • London CallingΔE00 1.232 · #cdcccf
  • Sparkling MetalΔE00 1.255 · #c3c3c7
  • Cerebellum GreyΔE00 1.324 · #cccbcd
  • Pico MetalΔE00 1.418 · #c2c3c7
  • Sharp GreyΔE00 1.524 · #c9cad1
  • LeadbelcherΔE00 1.597 · #cacacb
  • Herring SilverΔE00 1.633 · #c6c8cf

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