Merino

#e1dbd0

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

#e1dbd0

RGB

225, 219, 208

OKLCh

89.3% 0.016 82.8°

CIELAB (D50)

87.7, 0.7, 6.2

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 91 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 15% 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 18.4; on black, Lc -85.1. 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 9.2 — no blue cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.38:1 — fails AA

Black text

15.24:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at15.24:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#7c766c 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

#e1dbd0

protanopia

#dcdcd0 · ΔE00 3.2

deuteranopia

#ddddd0 · ΔE00 3.4

tritanopia

#dedebb · ΔE00 9.2

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isWhite Luxe at ΔE00 0.504: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • White LuxeΔE00 0.504 · #e2dcd2
  • Light Sandy DayΔE00 0.54 · #e1dacf
  • Noble CreamΔE00 0.602 · #e1dace
  • Egret WhiteΔE00 0.621 · #dfd9cf
  • Aesthetic WhiteΔE00 0.645 · #e3ddd3
  • Oyster HazeΔE00 0.787 · #e4ded2
  • PolishedΔE00 0.8 · #ded8ce
  • Texan AngelΔE00 0.845 · #e2ddd1
  • Taupe TeaseΔE00 0.858 · #e0d9cf
  • Spun WoolΔE00 0.87 · #e3ded4
  • Quiet InterludeΔE00 0.917 · #ddd7cc
  • Petal SmokeΔE00 0.928 · #e2dcd3

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