White Elephant
#dedee5
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
#dedee5
RGB
222, 222, 229
OKLCh
90.3% 0.009 286.2°
CIELAB (D50)
88.6, 1.0, -3.4
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 47 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 19% 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 16.7; on black, Lc -87.0. 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
1.34:1 — fails AA
Black text
15.69:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at15.69:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#76767c is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#dedee5
protanopia
#dedee5 · ΔE00 0.0
deuteranopia
#dedee5 · ΔE00 0.0
tritanopia
#dedee5 · ΔE00 0.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isFestive Ferret at ΔE00 0.508: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Festive FerretΔE00 0.508 · #dfdfe5
- Violet EchoΔE00 0.523 · #dfdee5
- Timid CloudΔE00 0.686 · #dcdde5
- Muffled WhiteΔE00 0.897 · #dadbe2
- Rare OrchidΔE00 0.911 · #dbdce2
- Grey PlacidityΔE00 0.962 · #dddde2
- Violet BreezeΔE00 0.994 · #dcdce5
- Sweet FlowerΔE00 1.006 · #e2e2ea
- Big Fish to FryΔE00 1.055 · #dadbe1
- Azure HintΔE00 1.092 · #dddce1
- Lady’s SlipperΔE00 1.112 · #e3e3ea
- Amourette EternelleΔE00 1.123 · #e0dfe8
9 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.