Ruins of Metal

#9b8b84

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

#9b8b84

RGB

155, 139, 132

OKLCh

64.9% 0.022 45.1°

CIELAB (D50)

59.2, 5.3, 6.1

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 2 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses only 12% 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 60.1; on black, Lc -41.7. 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 8.9 and 9.6 and 24.2 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

3.27:1 — large text only

Black text

6.42:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at6.42:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#83746d 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

#9b8b84

protanopia

#8d8d84 · ΔE00 8.9

deuteranopia

#909084 · ΔE00 9.6

tritanopia

#939328 · ΔE00 24.2

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isWarm Grey at ΔE00 1.445: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.

  • Warm GreyΔE00 1.445 · #978a84
  • Cantankerous HippoΔE00 1.974 · #96887f
  • Cheyenne RockΔE00 2.081 · #9f918a
  • SatelliteΔE00 2.086 · #9f8d89
  • GinnezumiΔE00 2.242 · #97867c
  • TalaveraΔE00 2.381 · #a0928b
  • Channel Seal GreyΔE00 2.535 · #a0928d
  • EthereaΔE00 2.539 · #a3928c
  • Abandoned MansionΔE00 2.554 · #94877e
  • Irish TeaΔE00 2.761 · #a38d86
  • Deer GodΔE00 2.801 · #96847a
  • Hammered SilverΔE00 2.836 · #978a7f

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