Back in Black
#16141c
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
#16141c
RGB
22, 20, 28
OKLCh
19.7% 0.016 296.4°
CIELAB (D50)
6.8, 2.5, -5.2
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 4 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 15% 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 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
18.25:1 — passes AA
Black text
1.15:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at18.25:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#16141c
protanopia
#14141c · ΔE00 1.4
deuteranopia
#15151c · ΔE00 1.4
tritanopia
#151517 · ΔE00 4.3
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isEigengrau at ΔE00 1.477: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- EigengrauΔE00 1.477 · #16161d
- Absence of LightΔE00 1.492 · #15151c
- Violet VoidΔE00 1.75 · #1a161d
- Kuroi BlackΔE00 1.957 · #14151d
- River StyxΔE00 2.721 · #161820
- Narwhal GreyΔE00 3.007 · #080813
- Midnight OilΔE00 3.081 · #0b0c14
- Aswad BlackΔE00 3.523 · #17181c
- Piano BlackΔE00 3.593 · #17171a
- Night DemonsΔE00 3.603 · #201b20
- NyctophobiaΔE00 3.68 · #0b0f1a
- Coarse WoolΔE00 3.766 · #181b26
6 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.