HueComb

Whale Bone

#e5e7e4

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

#e5e7e4

RGB

229, 231, 228

OKLCh

92.6% 0.004 134.9°

CIELAB (D50)

91.4, -1.1, 1.2

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 79 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 12.1; on black, Lc -91.9. 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

1.24:1 — fails AA

Black text

16.88:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at16.88:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#757775 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

#e5e7e4

protanopia

#e7e7e4 · ΔE00 1.1

deuteranopia

#e6e6e4 · ΔE00 1.1

tritanopia

#e6e6ea · ΔE00 3.8

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isMt. Hood White at ΔE00 0.433: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Mt. Hood WhiteΔE00 0.433 · #e7e9e6
  • Bridal WreathΔE00 0.494 · #e5e7e5
  • Blanc de BlancΔE00 0.503 · #e4e7e4
  • Grey WonderΔE00 0.688 · #e5e8e6
  • Blue KissΔE00 0.699 · #e2e5e2
  • Coastal FogΔE00 0.744 · #e5e8e4
  • Pacific PearlΔE00 0.795 · #e8eae6
  • Steam WhiteΔE00 0.81 · #e8e9e5
  • Arctic WhiteΔE00 0.864 · #e9eae7
  • AriaΔE00 0.958 · #e3e4e2
  • Ceiling Bright WhiteΔE00 0.974 · #e9ebe7
  • Silent WhiteΔE00 0.995 · #e3e7e4

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