HueComb

Gateway Grey

#a0a09c

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

#a0a09c

RGB

160, 160, 156

OKLCh

70.5% 0.006 106.5°

CIELAB (D50)

65.8, -0.6, 2.1

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 19 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 51.2; on black, Lc -50.7. 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.
  • 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

2.62:1 — fails AA

Black text

8.00:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at8.00:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#777773 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

#a0a09c

protanopia

#a0a09c · ΔE00 0.0

deuteranopia

#a0a09c · ΔE00 0.0

tritanopia

#a0a09c · 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 isMountain Mist at ΔE00 0.853: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Mountain MistΔE00 0.853 · #a09f9c
  • Stamped ConcreteΔE00 1 · #a0a09a
  • BedrockΔE00 1.028 · #9e9d99
  • Grayve-YardΔE00 1.103 · #a1a19f
  • CharonΔE00 1.294 · #a1a29c
  • Still Life in GreyΔE00 1.343 · #a1a39f
  • Elemental GreyΔE00 1.591 · #a0a09f
  • Hugh’s HueΔE00 1.612 · #9fa09f
  • Grey GlossΔE00 1.625 · #a3a29b
  • Charmed ChaliceΔE00 1.631 · #a1a1a0
  • Mortar GreyΔE00 1.643 · #9e9f9e
  • Stone AgeΔE00 1.702 · #a29f9b

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