Coal Hard Truth
#3b3b3d
A neutral that has no useful hue — it reads as a grey. It is dark — it carries white text and needs care with black.
Hex
#3b3b3d
RGB
59, 59, 61
OKLCh
35.3% 0.003 286.2°
CIELAB (D50)
24.9, 0.3, -1.2
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 95.9; 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
11.18:1 — passes AA
Black text
1.88:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at11.18:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#3b3b3d
protanopia
#3b3b3d · ΔE00 0.0
deuteranopia
#3b3b3d · ΔE00 0.0
tritanopia
#3b3b3d · ΔE00 0.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isShisha Coal at ΔE00 0.864: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Shisha CoalΔE00 0.864 · #3c3b3c
- Baltic SeaΔE00 1.155 · #3c3d3e
- Black SmokeΔE00 1.161 · #3e3e3f
- Dark SummoningΔE00 1.183 · #383839
- Sayward PineΔE00 1.402 · #383739
- Dead PixelΔE00 1.405 · #3b3a3a
- Dark EngineΔE00 1.407 · #3e3f41
- Raven BlackΔE00 1.442 · #3d3d3d
- Boltgun MetalΔE00 1.477 · #393939
- Black LiquoriceΔE00 1.564 · #3a3b3b
- Yin MistΔE00 1.573 · #3b3c3c
- MontanaΔE00 1.577 · #393b3c
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.