HueComb

Placebo

#e7e7e7

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

#e7e7e7

RGB

231, 231, 231

OKLCh

92.8% 0.000 89.9°

CIELAB (D50)

91.6, 0.0, 0.0

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 74 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 almost none of the chroma available here: this is a grey with a trace of hue rather than a colour.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 11.7; on black, Lc -92.3. 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

1.24:1 — fails AA

Black text

16.98:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at16.98:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#777777 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

#e7e7e7

protanopia

#e7e7e7 · ΔE00 0.0

deuteranopia

#e7e7e7 · ΔE00 0.0

tritanopia

#e7e7e7 · ΔE00 0.0

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isUnicorn Silver at ΔE00 0.216: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Unicorn SilverΔE00 0.216 · #e8e8e8
  • Extraordinary Abundance of TingeΔE00 0.217 · #e6e6e6
  • Ambience WhiteΔE00 0.521 · #e7e7e6
  • Moon LilyΔE00 0.56 · #e6e6e7
  • LeukophobiaΔE00 0.569 · #e8e8e9
  • PlasterΔE00 0.646 · #eaeaea
  • SnowbankΔE00 0.654 · #e8e9e9
  • Titanium WhiteΔE00 0.654 · #e4e4e4
  • LatteoΔE00 0.683 · #e8e7e6
  • Polish WhiteΔE00 0.727 · #e9e8e7
  • Cold MorningΔE00 0.792 · #e6e5e4
  • MercuryΔE00 0.86 · #ebebeb

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