Black Hole
#010203
A neutral that has no useful hue — it reads as a grey. It is very dark — white text sits on it comfortably, black text does not.
Hex
#010203
RGB
1, 2, 3
OKLCh
8.2% 0.008 240.8°
CIELAB (D50)
0.5, -0.2, -0.5
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 15 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 106.0; on black, Lc 0.0. 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
20.77:1 — passes AA
Black text
1.01:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at20.77:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#010203
protanopia
#020203 · ΔE00 0.4
deuteranopia
#020203 · ΔE00 0.5
tritanopia
#020206 · ΔE00 1.5
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isBinary Black at ΔE00 0.55: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Binary BlackΔE00 0.55 · #010101
- Armour WashΔE00 0.564 · #030303
- BlackΔE00 0.607 · #000000
- VantablackΔE00 0.834 · #000100
- Black MetalΔE00 0.848 · #060606
- Reversed GreyΔE00 1.114 · #080808
- Raven’s CoatΔE00 1.236 · #030205
- Registration BlackΔE00 1.335 · #000200
- Existential AngstΔE00 1.404 · #0a0a0a
- Accursed BlackΔE00 1.466 · #090807
- RavenΔE00 1.558 · #0b0b0b
- NinjaΔE00 1.577 · #020308
8 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.