Blank Stare
#8b9cac
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
#8b9cac
RGB
139, 156, 172
OKLCh
68.5% 0.030 246.6°
CIELAB (D50)
63.4, -3.6, -10.5
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 8 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 17% 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 54.2; on black, Lc -47.6. 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 8.3 and 8.8 and 11.8 — no red cone.
Text on this colour
White text
2.82:1 — fails AA
Black text
7.45:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at7.45:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#687988 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
#8b9cac
protanopia
#9a9aac · ΔE00 8.3
deuteranopia
#9797ac · ΔE00 8.8
tritanopia
#9494d1 · ΔE00 11.8
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isUrban Vibes at ΔE00 1.039: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- Urban VibesΔE00 1.039 · #8899aa
- Gorgeous GraphiteΔE00 1.187 · #8d9ba9
- Sonata BlueΔE00 1.206 · #8a9eae
- Faded SeaΔE00 1.375 · #8d9cae
- Atom BlueΔE00 1.635 · #8f9cac
- TsunamiΔE00 1.783 · #869baf
- Silver StormΔE00 1.79 · #8599a8
- Private JetΔE00 1.976 · #889db2
- Relaxing BlueΔE00 2.017 · #899daa
- Lost at SeaΔE00 2.049 · #8d9ca7
- FoghornΔE00 2.055 · #909fb2
- Ashley BlueΔE00 2.055 · #8398a9
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.