Grauzone
#85a3b2
A blue that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.
Hex
#85a3b2
RGB
133, 163, 178
OKLCh
69.8% 0.040 229.7°
CIELAB (D50)
65.1, -8.1, -11.4
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 7 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 29% 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 51.8; on black, Lc -50.1. 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.
- protanopia and deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 12.9 and 13.7 and 13.4 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
2.67:1 — fails AA
Black text
7.88:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at7.88:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#5e7b89 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#85a3b2
protanopia
#a0a0b2 · ΔE00 12.9
deuteranopia
#9b9bb3 · ΔE00 13.7
tritanopia
#9595ec · ΔE00 13.4
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isLake Winnipeg at ΔE00 1.185: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- Lake WinnipegΔE00 1.185 · #80a1b0
- Favourite JeansΔE00 1.489 · #8aa3b1
- Silver SkateΔE00 1.51 · #87a1b1
- Pewter BlueΔE00 1.608 · #8ba8b7
- Blue AlpsΔE00 1.69 · #89a3ae
- Blue SkylightsΔE00 1.7 · #8ca6b5
- Serene StreamΔE00 1.977 · #819daa
- Blue NuthatchΔE00 2.016 · #88a4ae
- Quilotoa BlueΔE00 2.208 · #7f9daf
- Yacht HarbourΔE00 2.227 · #7c9dae
- Lake OkobojiΔE00 2.302 · #83a0b4
- Blue CascadeΔE00 2.31 · #7b9eb0
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.