Venus Mist

#5f606e

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

#5f606e

RGB

95, 96, 110

OKLCh

49.3% 0.022 282.3°

CIELAB (D50)

41.0, 1.9, -8.1

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 7 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses only 8% 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 81.0; on black, Lc -20.9. 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

6.20:1 — passes AA

Black text

3.38:1 — large text only

White text is the better of the two at6.20:1. That is enough for body text.

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#5f606e

protanopia

#60606e · ΔE00 0.6

deuteranopia

#60606e · ΔE00 0.6

tritanopia

#606070 · ΔE00 1.5

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isPrince Royal at ΔE00 0.779: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Prince RoyalΔE00 0.779 · #60606f
  • Mid GreyΔE00 0.823 · #5f5f6e
  • Damp BasementΔE00 0.999 · #5f6171
  • CometΔE00 1.647 · #636373
  • Concrete LandscapeΔE00 1.7 · #5c606e
  • Mysterious NightΔE00 1.707 · #5c6070
  • Script InkΔE00 1.904 · #60616b
  • EventideΔE00 2.102 · #656470
  • Shearwater BlackΔE00 2.283 · #5b5b6c
  • Blue LinenΔE00 2.348 · #5a5e6a
  • SmokyΔE00 2.384 · #605d6b
  • SpikeΔE00 2.551 · #656271

10 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.