Stainless Steel
#b4bdc7
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
#b4bdc7
RGB
180, 189, 199
OKLCh
79.4% 0.017 250.9°
CIELAB (D50)
76.1, -1.7, -6.2
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 16 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 only 16% 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 36.2; on black, Lc -66.3. 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.
- tritanopia shifts it by ΔE00 11.1 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
1.90:1 — fails AA
Black text
11.04:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at11.04:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#6f7881 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
#b4bdc7
protanopia
#bcbcc7 · ΔE00 4.7
deuteranopia
#babac7 · ΔE00 5.0
tritanopia
#b9b9de · ΔE00 11.1
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isSpirit at ΔE00 0.689: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- SpiritΔE00 0.689 · #b2bbc6
- OxfordΔE00 0.738 · #b1bbc5
- Steampunk GreyΔE00 1.218 · #b8c0c8
- Granite FogΔE00 1.237 · #b1bac2
- KinderΔE00 1.318 · #b8bfca
- Blue RinseΔE00 1.342 · #b7bdc6
- AdirondackΔE00 1.429 · #b0b9c1
- IcebreakerΔE00 1.475 · #b7c2cc
- Winter WonderlandΔE00 1.545 · #b3bfc8
- Yorkshire CloudΔE00 1.613 · #bac3cc
- Misty Morning DewΔE00 1.636 · #bac1cc
- Silver SpringsΔE00 1.672 · #b7bdc4
10 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.