Fossil Stone
#e3ddcc
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
#e3ddcc
RGB
227, 221, 204
OKLCh
89.8% 0.024 90.8°
CIELAB (D50)
88.3, -0.0, 9.1
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 88 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 18% 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 17.5; on black, Lc -86.1. 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 8.5 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
1.36:1 — fails AA
Black text
15.48:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at15.48:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#7c7667 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
#e3ddcc
protanopia
#dedecc · ΔE00 3.1
deuteranopia
#dfdfcc · ΔE00 3.2
tritanopia
#e0e0b6 · ΔE00 8.5
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isWinter Frost at ΔE00 0.225: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.
- Winter FrostΔE00 0.225 · #e4decd
- Catacomb BoneΔE00 0.441 · #e2dccc
- Pueblo WhiteΔE00 0.575 · #e5dfcd
- Vintage LinenΔE00 0.582 · #e3dcca
- LitewoodΔE00 0.61 · #e5dfcf
- Confident WhiteΔE00 0.646 · #e4dfce
- Frankly EarnestΔE00 0.647 · #e2dbca
- Quail EggΔE00 0.788 · #e3ddce
- Peace & QuietΔE00 0.8 · #e0dac8
- ArrowrooteΔE00 0.831 · #e4decf
- SedonaΔE00 0.878 · #e7e0cf
- Hazelnut CreamΔE00 0.883 · #e6dfcf
11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.