Roman Silver

#838996

A neutral that has no useful hue — it reads as a grey. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.

Hex

#838996

RGB

131, 137, 150

OKLCh

62.9% 0.021 265.9°

CIELAB (D50)

56.9, -0.2, -7.8

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 7 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses only 10% 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 62.7; on black, Lc -39.0. 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.
  • tritanopia shifts it by ΔE00 7.8 — no blue cone.

Text on this colour

White text

3.51:1 — large text only

Black text

5.98:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at5.98:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#717784 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.

Try it against your own background

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#838996

protanopia

#888896 · ΔE00 3.3

deuteranopia

#878796 · ΔE00 3.5

tritanopia

#8686a5 · ΔE00 7.8

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isRiver Tour at ΔE00 0.851: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • River TourΔE00 0.851 · #848b99
  • Ombre GreyΔE00 1.165 · #848998
  • Applause PleaseΔE00 1.334 · #858c9b
  • Sea LionΔE00 1.513 · #7f8793
  • Yin Hūi SilverΔE00 1.566 · #848999
  • Cold Trade WindsΔE00 1.752 · #7e8692
  • Smoky StudioΔE00 1.963 · #7e8590
  • Prophetic SeaΔE00 2.158 · #818b9c
  • Stand OutΔE00 2.235 · #7f8596
  • Salon BleuΔE00 2.24 · #7d8697
  • Deep Smoke SignalΔE00 2.331 · #7d8392
  • Flannel PyjamasΔE00 2.653 · #8b8d98

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