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Webby Sumi

#a8a6bb
Notes

Webby Sumi (#A8A6BB) is a true blue with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (246°, 13%, 69%) places it in the muted band at a mid lightness. It works across type, buttons, and borders, saturated enough to feel deliberate but balanced enough to not fight the rest of the palette. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary yellow. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#a8a6bb
RGB
rgb(168, 166, 187)
HSL
hsl(246, 13%, 69%)
HWB
hwb(246 65% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.4% 0.030 290.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6574 0.6512 0.7266)
HSV
hsv(246, 11%, 73%)
LAB
lab(68.88% 4.87 -10.50)
LCH
lch(68.88% 11.58 294.90)
CMYK
cmyk(10%, 11%, 0%, 27%)

Etymology

Webby
adjective

Old English webb, web — adjectival suffix -y. As a color modifier, webby implies a pale-and-network-and-thin-thread quality, the pale color of attic-and-cellar long-undisturbed cobweb-and-spider-silk thin-network-pattern dust-collected surface. Sits at the pale-and-thin end of the grid, parallel to cobwebby and gossamer in usage.

Sumi
noun

Japanese ink stick, made from soot of pine resin or sesame oil mixed with animal-glue binder, used in sumi-e brush painting and shodō calligraphy. Although nominally black, undiluted sumi on rice paper carries a deep blue-violet undertone. Sumi color refers to a heavily-loaded sumi brushstroke: a saturated, slightly cool deep blue-violet with the matte finish of pine-soot ink on absorbent washi.

Closest matches

The nearest named color in three reference sources, ranked by perceptual distance (ΔE76 in CIELAB). ΔE < 1 is imperceptible to most viewers; ΔE > 10 is clearly different. When two sources point to the same hex they’re merged into one tile; click any to open that color’s page.

Variations

Click any swatch to explore

Harmonies

Accessibility

Color-vision simulation

How this color appears to viewers with the four major color-vision-deficiency types. Computed via the Machado (2009) physiologically-based model. If a tile matches the original, the color reads the same to that viewer.

#a8a6bb
Original
#a2a8bc
Protanopia
#a1a8ba
Deuteranopia
#a4a9ad
Tritanopia
#a8a8a8
Achromatopsia
WCAG contrast

The color used as foreground text against pure white and pure black, with the contrast ratio and WCAG 2.1 grade. Aim for AA (4.5:1) for body text and AA Large (3:1) for 18 pt+ headlines; AAA (7:1) is the gold standard for long-form reading surfaces.

The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
Failon White
2.38:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon Black
8.84:1

Wide gamut

Display P3 representation

The CSS Color 4 wide-gamut form of this color. Both swatches render the same color on every display — the P3 form only diverges from sRGB when a designer pushes channels outside sRGB's reach.

sRGB hex
sRGB hex
##A8A6BB
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6574 0.6512 0.7266)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.030

This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.

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