Au Clair de la Lune

#f4f2e2

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

#f4f2e2

RGB

244, 242, 226

OKLCh

95.8% 0.021 101.0°

CIELAB (D50)

95.3, -1.3, 8.0

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 98 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 0.0; on black, Lc -98.9. 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

1.13:1 — fails AA

Black text

18.65:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at18.65:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#797769 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

#f4f2e2

protanopia

#f2f2e2 · ΔE00 1.0

deuteranopia

#f3f3e2 · ΔE00 1.0

tritanopia

#f3f3db · ΔE00 3.0

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isRyu’s Kimono at ΔE00 0.208: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Ryu’s KimonoΔE00 0.208 · #f3f1e1
  • Desert IguanaΔE00 0.659 · #f3f2e1
  • Crème VanilleΔE00 0.676 · #f1f0e0
  • Flickering FireflyΔE00 0.825 · #f8f6e6
  • Diamond DustΔE00 0.829 · #f8f5e5
  • White WoolΔE00 0.829 · #f2efde
  • Tibetan JasmineΔE00 0.853 · #f6f3e1
  • Yucatan White HabañeroΔE00 0.88 · #f2efe0
  • White MirageΔE00 0.947 · #f5f4e6
  • Storksbill WhiteΔE00 0.982 · #f2f2e2
  • White GeraniumΔE00 1.024 · #f1f1e1
  • Misty Beach CattleΔE00 1.027 · #f1eedf

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