HueComb

Sail Into the Horizon

#a3bbdc

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

#a3bbdc

RGB

163, 187, 220

OKLCh

78.5% 0.054 256.4°

CIELAB (D50)

74.9, -3.0, -19.5

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 12 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 49% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 37.8; on black, Lc -64.6. 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 9.6 and 9.5 and 7.1 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.96:1 — fails AA

Black text

10.70:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at10.70:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#627897 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

#a3bbdc

protanopia

#b9b9dc · ΔE00 9.6

deuteranopia

#b4b4dc · ΔE00 9.5

tritanopia

#b0b0ff · ΔE00 7.1

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isFairies in America at ΔE00 0.268: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Fairies in AmericaΔE00 0.268 · #a2badb
  • Clear Lake TrailΔE00 0.602 · #a3bbda
  • ValourΔE00 0.816 · #a3bcdb
  • Artesian PoolΔE00 0.994 · #a6bee1
  • September AsterΔE00 1.127 · #a8bedd
  • PylonΔE00 1.222 · #9fbadf
  • BlairΔE00 1.231 · #a1bde0
  • Mont BlancΔE00 1.372 · #9eb6d8
  • Baltic BreamΔE00 1.633 · #9fbbda
  • Blue LipsΔE00 1.727 · #a6bce2
  • Wings of PegasusΔE00 1.927 · #9ebbda
  • Lavender PhloxΔE00 1.992 · #a6badf

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