Slippery Soap

#efedd8

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

#efedd8

RGB

239, 237, 216

OKLCh

94.2% 0.028 102.5°

CIELAB (D50)

93.5, -1.9, 10.5

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 48 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 19% 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 8.8; on black, Lc -95.5. 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

1.18:1 — fails AA

Black text

17.78:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at17.78:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#797765 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

#efedd8

protanopia

#ededd8 · ΔE00 1.0

deuteranopia

#eeeed8 · ΔE00 1.0

tritanopia

#eeeed1 · ΔE00 2.8

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isAcid Blond at ΔE00 0.346: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Acid BlondΔE00 0.346 · #efedd7
  • Soft MoonlightΔE00 0.509 · #efecd7
  • Dusky MoonΔE00 0.543 · #edecd7
  • CravatΔE00 0.56 · #eeedd9
  • Summer JasmineΔE00 0.613 · #eeebd6
  • Washed CanvasΔE00 0.858 · #f3f0da
  • Hazy GroveΔE00 0.928 · #f2f1dc
  • Glisten GreenΔE00 1.048 · #f2efdc
  • Amazon BreezeΔE00 1.083 · #ebebd6
  • Pale Rebelka JakubΔE00 1.101 · #ebebd7
  • Glittery GlowΔE00 1.12 · #eeeddb
  • Olive TintΔE00 1.128 · #efebd7

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