Nectar

#ecdacd

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

#ecdacd

RGB

236, 218, 205

OKLCh

89.9% 0.027 58.3°

CIELAB (D50)

88.3, 4.8, 8.8

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 37 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 42% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 17.5; on black, Lc -86.1. 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.
  • protanopia and deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 9.2 and 9.8 and 21.8 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.36:1 — fails AA

Black text

15.48:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at15.48:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#847468 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

#ecdacd

protanopia

#dcdccd · ΔE00 9.2

deuteranopia

#dfdfcd · ΔE00 9.8

tritanopia

#e3e37a · ΔE00 21.8

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isGobi Beige at ΔE00 0.495: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Gobi BeigeΔE00 0.495 · #ebdace
  • ShorelandΔE00 0.772 · #ead9cb
  • White TruffleΔE00 0.842 · #efdbcd
  • Nutmeg FrostΔE00 0.844 · #ecd9ca
  • Nearly PeachΔE00 0.952 · #efded1
  • PalatialΔE00 1.014 · #eedcd1
  • Woolly BeigeΔE00 1.208 · #e7d5c9
  • Antique PearlΔE00 1.213 · #ebd7cb
  • Spice CookieΔE00 1.286 · #f0ded3
  • Malted MilkΔE00 1.332 · #e8d9ce
  • Soft ShoeΔE00 1.393 · #e8d5c6
  • Pink ScallopΔE00 1.423 · #f2e0d4

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