Blindfolded
#5a5e61
A neutral that has no useful hue — it reads as a grey. It is mid — the hardest range to put text on, either colour struggles.
Hex
#5a5e61
RGB
90, 94, 97
OKLCh
47.9% 0.007 239.9°
CIELAB (D50)
39.6, -1.1, -2.3
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 5 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 6% 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 82.4; on black, Lc -19.5. 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.
- tritanopia shifts it by ΔE00 7.2 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
6.55:1 — passes AA
Black text
3.21:1 — large text only
White text is the better of the two at6.55:1. That is enough for body text.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#5a5e61
protanopia
#5e5e61 · ΔE00 2.4
deuteranopia
#5d5d61 · ΔE00 2.6
tritanopia
#5c5c6c · ΔE00 7.2
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isGlazed Granite at ΔE00 0.572: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Glazed GraniteΔE00 0.572 · #5b5e61
- Pencil PointΔE00 0.669 · #595d61
- Sheet MetalΔE00 1.454 · #5e6063
- Graphic CharcoalΔE00 1.473 · #5c5e5f
- Anchor GreyΔE00 1.887 · #596062
- Carriage WheelΔE00 2.008 · #5d6367
- Blackish GreenΔE00 2.051 · #5d6161
- Summer ConcreteΔE00 2.143 · #57595d
- Mostly MetalΔE00 2.206 · #575e5f
- Knight’s ArmourΔE00 2.258 · #5c5d5d
- Blackish GreyΔE00 2.341 · #5b5c61
- ParamountΔE00 2.41 · #5b6161
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.