In the Dark
#3b3c41
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
#3b3c41
RGB
59, 60, 65
OKLCh
35.7% 0.009 276.9°
CIELAB (D50)
25.4, 0.4, -3.2
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 6 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- 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 95.5; 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
11.00:1 — passes AA
Black text
1.91:1 — fails AA
White text is the better of the two at11.00:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#3b3c41
protanopia
#3c3c41 · ΔE00 0.7
deuteranopia
#3c3c41 · ΔE00 0.7
tritanopia
#3c3c44 · ΔE00 2.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isAfter Midnight at ΔE00 1.135: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- After MidnightΔE00 1.135 · #38393f
- Artist’s CharcoalΔE00 1.23 · #37393e
- Detective ThrillerΔE00 1.535 · #393c40
- VulcanΔE00 1.695 · #36383c
- Coal Hard TruthΔE00 1.854 · #3b3b3d
- CryptΔE00 1.944 · #373b40
- Antarctic DeepΔE00 2.064 · #35383f
- Dark EngineΔE00 2.067 · #3e3f41
- MetaliseΔE00 2.177 · #34373c
- Hawk’s EyeΔE00 2.255 · #34363a
- Bluish BlackΔE00 2.276 · #413f44
- Volcanic SandΔE00 2.374 · #404048
8 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.