HueComb

Million Grey

#999999

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

#999999

RGB

153, 153, 153

OKLCh

68.3% 0.000 89.9°

CIELAB (D50)

63.2, 0.0, 0.0

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 15 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it — this part of the space is crowded, and the names here are finer distinctions than most people make.
  • It uses almost none of the chroma available here: this is a grey with a trace of hue rather than a colour.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 54.6; on black, Lc -47.2. 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

2.85:1 — fails AA

Black text

7.37:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at7.37:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#777777 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

#999999

protanopia

#999999 · ΔE00 0.0

deuteranopia

#999999 · ΔE00 0.0

tritanopia

#999999 · ΔE00 0.0

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isSpanish Grey at ΔE00 0.32: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Spanish GreyΔE00 0.32 · #989898
  • HydrargyrumΔE00 0.635 · #9b9b9b
  • BasaltΔE00 0.86 · #989998
  • Codex GreyΔE00 0.949 · #9c9c9c
  • Metal ChiΔE00 1.086 · #9c9c9b
  • WalrusΔE00 1.229 · #999b9b
  • Polished PewterΔE00 1.261 · #9c9a99
  • WaitingΔE00 1.262 · #9d9d9d
  • Shark FinΔE00 1.517 · #969795
  • Dark LimestoneΔE00 1.683 · #989a98
  • Smoky ToneΔE00 1.712 · #9d9e9d
  • Jet GreyΔE00 1.758 · #9d9a9a

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