HueComb

Grain of Salt

#d8dbe1

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

#d8dbe1

RGB

216, 219, 225

OKLCh

89.1% 0.009 264.5°

CIELAB (D50)

87.3, -0.2, -3.3

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 51 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 18.8; on black, Lc -84.7. 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.
  • 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

1.39:1 — fails AA

Black text

15.14:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at15.14:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#74777c 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

#d8dbe1

protanopia

#dbdbe1 · ΔE00 1.6

deuteranopia

#dadae1 · ΔE00 1.7

tritanopia

#dadae9 · ΔE00 4.8

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isWispy Skies at ΔE00 0.787: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Wispy SkiesΔE00 0.787 · #d8dce1
  • Terminator ChromeΔE00 0.905 · #dcdfe5
  • Inked SilkΔE00 0.964 · #d9dce4
  • Empire State GreyΔE00 0.989 · #d9dbdf
  • Snow TigerΔE00 1.021 · #dadce0
  • Ash in the AirΔE00 1.034 · #d9dde5
  • RivuletΔE00 1.035 · #d5dae1
  • Big Fish to FryΔE00 1.041 · #dadbe1
  • Hidden CreekΔE00 1.041 · #d5dae0
  • Faint FernΔE00 1.048 · #dadbe0
  • House Sparrow’s EggΔE00 1.082 · #d6d9dd
  • Rare OrchidΔE00 1.087 · #dbdce2

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