Holy Ghost

#efe9e6

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

#efe9e6

RGB

239, 233, 230

OKLCh

93.8% 0.008 48.7°

CIELAB (D50)

92.8, 1.7, 2.2

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 57 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 22% 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 9.9; on black, Lc -94.3. 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.
  • tritanopia shifts it by ΔE00 10.3 — no blue cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.20:1 — fails AA

Black text

17.47:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at17.47:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#7b7673 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

#efe9e6

protanopia

#eaeae6 · ΔE00 3.2

deuteranopia

#ebebe6 · ΔE00 3.4

tritanopia

#ececd2 · ΔE00 10.3

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isSweet Cream at ΔE00 0.214: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Sweet CreamΔE00 0.214 · #f0eae7
  • Lauren’s LaceΔE00 0.516 · #efeae7
  • NYC Apartment WallΔE00 0.651 · #efeae8
  • White DogwoodΔE00 0.789 · #efeae6
  • Bunny HopΔE00 1.026 · #f3ecea
  • Pink MirageΔE00 1.068 · #f4ede9
  • Flower Girl DressΔE00 1.084 · #ede7e6
  • Fresh DoughΔE00 1.086 · #f2ebe6
  • Charolais CattleΔE00 1.102 · #f1ebea
  • Pale LilyΔE00 1.187 · #f3ece7
  • Shell BrookΔE00 1.239 · #eee7e6
  • White AlyssumΔE00 1.247 · #efebe7

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