HueComb

Pastel Grey

#cfcfc4

A neutral that has no useful hue — it reads as a grey. It is very light — it works as a page background, not as text.

Hex

#cfcfc4

RGB

207, 207, 196

OKLCh

85.1% 0.015 106.7°

CIELAB (D50)

82.9, -1.5, 5.5

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 38 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 8% 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 26.0; on black, Lc -77.0. 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

1.57:1 — fails AA

Black text

13.38:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at13.38:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#77776d 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

#cfcfc4

protanopia

#cfcfc4 · ΔE00 0.0

deuteranopia

#cfcfc4 · ΔE00 0.0

tritanopia

#cfcfc4 · 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 isPan’s Flute at ΔE00 0.542: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Pan’s FluteΔE00 0.542 · #cfd0c5
  • Conservative GreyΔE00 0.779 · #d1d0c6
  • Stony PathΔE00 0.956 · #d3d3c8
  • EonΔE00 1.251 · #d4d3c9
  • LatticeΔE00 1.319 · #cecec6
  • Passing ShadowΔE00 1.348 · #cbcac0
  • MuslinΔE00 1.349 · #d3d1c4
  • CreateΔE00 1.374 · #c9cabf
  • SilhouetteΔE00 1.385 · #cbcdc4
  • Filmy GreenΔE00 1.393 · #d1d3c7
  • Particular MintΔE00 1.467 · #d0d2c5
  • Metallic MistΔE00 1.476 · #cdccbe

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