Lightning Bolt

#e5ebe6

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

#e5ebe6

RGB

229, 235, 230

OKLCh

93.4% 0.009 150.7°

CIELAB (D50)

92.5, -2.7, 1.7

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 57 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 10.3; on black, Lc -93.8. 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 10.1 — no blue cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.21:1 — fails AA

Black text

17.36:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at17.36:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#737874 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

#e5ebe6

protanopia

#eaeae6 · ΔE00 3.0

deuteranopia

#e9e9e6 · ΔE00 3.2

tritanopia

#e8e8f7 · ΔE00 10.1

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isMist Spirit at ΔE00 0.633: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Mist SpiritΔE00 0.633 · #e4ebe7
  • Gossamer WingsΔE00 0.64 · #e8eee9
  • Bone DustΔE00 0.678 · #e7ece6
  • Distant CloudΔE00 0.698 · #e5eae6
  • Dusting PowderΔE00 0.738 · #e7ece8
  • GlimmerΔE00 0.836 · #e1e8e3
  • Frothy SurfΔE00 0.945 · #e7ebe6
  • Sweet ArielΔE00 1.014 · #e5eae3
  • Cool ReflectionΔE00 1.063 · #eaf0eb
  • Morning SongΔE00 1.268 · #e4ece9
  • White BlazeΔE00 1.282 · #e3e7e1
  • Clear ViewΔE00 1.293 · #e2eae7

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