Matt Black
#151515
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
#151515
RGB
21, 21, 21
OKLCh
19.6% 0.000 0.0°
CIELAB (D50)
6.8, 0.0, 0.0
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 19 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 104.9; 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
18.26:1 — passes AA
Black text
1.15:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at18.26:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#151515
protanopia
#151515 · ΔE00 0.0
deuteranopia
#151515 · ΔE00 0.0
tritanopia
#151515 · ΔE00 0.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isSooty at ΔE00 0.276: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- SootyΔE00 0.276 · #141414
- Pot BlackΔE00 0.288 · #161616
- Cursed BlackΔE00 0.54 · #131313
- Cynical BlackΔE00 0.59 · #171717
- Dark Tone InkΔE00 0.792 · #121212
- Death MetalΔE00 0.814 · #141313
- Thamar BlackΔE00 0.902 · #181818
- Sticky Black TarmacΔE00 0.968 · #131212
- Dreamless SleepΔE00 1.032 · #111111
- Kettle BlackΔE00 1.086 · #141314
- Dark MoonΔE00 1.106 · #161718
- Dark VeilΔE00 1.366 · #141311
7 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.