Albescent

#e1dacb

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

#e1dacb

RGB

225, 218, 203

OKLCh

89.0% 0.022 85.9°

CIELAB (D50)

87.3, 0.6, 8.3

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 102 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 18% 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 19.0; on black, Lc -84.5. 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.
  • tritanopia shifts it by ΔE00 10.0 — no blue cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.39:1 — fails AA

Black text

15.09:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at15.09:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#7c7669 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

#e1dacb

protanopia

#dbdbcb · ΔE00 3.6

deuteranopia

#dcdccb · ΔE00 3.8

tritanopia

#ddddb1 · ΔE00 10.0

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isTiger Claw at ΔE00 0.402: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Tiger ClawΔE00 0.402 · #e1daca
  • Neutral GroundΔE00 0.547 · #e2daca
  • Stretched CanvasΔE00 0.625 · #dfd8c8
  • Carded WoolΔE00 0.68 · #e4ddce
  • Last StrawΔE00 0.796 · #e3dbcd
  • Quail EggΔE00 0.812 · #e3ddce
  • Frankly EarnestΔE00 0.817 · #e2dbca
  • Catacomb BoneΔE00 0.823 · #e2dccc
  • ArrowrooteΔE00 0.997 · #e4decf
  • EarthlingΔE00 1.008 · #ded6c7
  • Canvas TanΔE00 1.023 · #ddd6c6
  • Hint of CreamΔE00 1.04 · #e4ded0

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