Alpaca

#f9ede2

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

#f9ede2

RGB

249, 237, 226

OKLCh

95.3% 0.020 65.1°

CIELAB (D50)

94.5, 2.8, 6.9

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 55 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 62% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 0.0; on black, Lc -97.3. 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.
  • protanopia and deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 6.2 and 6.6 and 16.4 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.15:1 — fails AA

Black text

18.24:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at18.24:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#7f756b 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

#f9ede2

protanopia

#eeeee2 · ΔE00 6.2

deuteranopia

#f1f1e2 · ΔE00 6.6

tritanopia

#f3f3b4 · ΔE00 16.4

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isSugar Dust at ΔE00 0.45: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Sugar DustΔE00 0.45 · #f9ede3
  • Creme AngelsΔE00 0.465 · #f8ede2
  • Bermuda ShellΔE00 0.493 · #f9eee3
  • Fine WhiteΔE00 0.517 · #faede1
  • Palish PeachΔE00 0.527 · #f7ece1
  • BacklightΔE00 0.626 · #fcf0e5
  • Weak OrangeΔE00 0.739 · #faede3
  • Soft MuslinΔE00 0.746 · #f7eadf
  • Natural WhiteΔE00 0.905 · #fbede2
  • White CanvasΔE00 0.911 · #faece1
  • Champagne FluteΔE00 0.934 · #f6ece2
  • Mallow RootΔE00 0.936 · #f8ebde

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