HueComb

Seine and Sensibility

#ccc4b0

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

#ccc4b0

RGB

204, 196, 176

OKLCh

82.1% 0.029 88.8°

CIELAB (D50)

79.4, 0.4, 11.1

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 21 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 17% 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 31.5; on black, Lc -71.2. 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 10.8 — no blue cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.74:1 — fails AA

Black text

12.09:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at12.09:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#7e7664 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

#ccc4b0

protanopia

#c5c5b0 · ΔE00 4.1

deuteranopia

#c6c6b0 · ΔE00 4.3

tritanopia

#c8c890 · ΔE00 10.8

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isWashed Khaki at ΔE00 0.616: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Washed KhakiΔE00 0.616 · #cac2af
  • Still MomentΔE00 0.792 · #cbc4b2
  • Dune GrassΔE00 1.027 · #cbc5b1
  • Sapphire Light YellowΔE00 1.193 · #cdc7b4
  • Oyster GreyΔE00 1.343 · #cbc1ae
  • Coliseum MarbleΔE00 1.445 · #cec8b6
  • Scenic PathΔE00 1.452 · #cec5b4
  • Velvet BeigeΔE00 1.556 · #d0c5b1
  • Unmarked TrailΔE00 1.56 · #d2cab7
  • Villa GreyΔE00 1.567 · #ccc4b4
  • Slumber SlothΔE00 1.6 · #cdc5b5
  • Oak ToneΔE00 1.649 · #d0c7b6

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