White
#ffffff
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
#ffffff
RGB
255, 255, 255
OKLCh
100.0% 0.000 89.9°
CIELAB (D50)
100.0, 0.0, 0.0
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 20 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 0.0; on black, Lc -107.9. 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
1.00:1 — fails AA
Black text
21.00:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at21.00:1. 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.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#ffffff
protanopia
#ffffff · ΔE00 0.0
deuteranopia
#ffffff · ΔE00 0.0
tritanopia
#ffffff · ΔE00 0.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isWhite as Heaven at ΔE00 0.198: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- White as HeavenΔE00 0.198 · #fefefe
- BrillianceΔE00 0.396 · #fdfdfd
- Pale GreyΔE00 0.64 · #fdfdfe
- WhiteoutΔE00 0.796 · #fbfbfb
- EmptinessΔE00 0.902 · #fcfdfc
- Dr. WhiteΔE00 0.997 · #fafafa
- Whitecap SnowΔE00 1.077 · #fffdfd
- DoctorΔE00 1.198 · #f9f9f9
- IglooΔE00 1.209 · #fdfcfa
- Wash MeΔE00 1.34 · #fafbfd
- Cloud PetalΔE00 1.346 · #faf9f8
- Zhēn Zhū Bái PearlΔE00 1.48 · #f8f8f9
8 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.