Wind Blown

#dde3e7

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

#dde3e7

RGB

221, 227, 231

OKLCh

91.2% 0.009 236.6°

CIELAB (D50)

89.9, -1.5, -2.7

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 49 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 14.6; on black, Lc -89.2. 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 9.0 — no blue cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.30:1 — fails AA

Black text

16.22:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at16.22:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#72787b 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

#dde3e7

protanopia

#e2e2e7 · ΔE00 3.1

deuteranopia

#e1e1e7 · ΔE00 3.3

tritanopia

#e0e0f8 · ΔE00 9.0

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isMilk Blue at ΔE00 0.466: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Milk BlueΔE00 0.466 · #dce3e7
  • Snow BlanketΔE00 0.481 · #dde3e8
  • Cold LightΔE00 0.488 · #dde3e6
  • Elusive BlueΔE00 0.493 · #dde4e8
  • Bright StarΔE00 0.503 · #dde2e6
  • Cosmic DustΔE00 0.541 · #dce2e5
  • Crystal BayΔE00 0.639 · #dbe2e7
  • City LightsΔE00 0.765 · #dfe6ea
  • ChickweedΔE00 0.893 · #d9dfe3
  • Pearl CityΔE00 0.936 · #dce4e9
  • MainsailΔE00 1.029 · #d9dfe2
  • Winter HavenΔE00 1.04 · #e1e6eb

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