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Fitted Ash

#a9aebb
Notes

Fitted Ash (#A9AEBB) is a true azure 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 (223°, 12%, 70%) 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 amber. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#a9aebb
RGB
rgb(169, 174, 187)
HSL
hsl(223, 12%, 70%)
HWB
hwb(223 66% 27%)
OKLCH
oklch(75.1% 0.019 269.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.6663 0.6817 0.7287)
HSV
hsv(223, 10%, 73%)
LAB
lab(71.07% 0.83 -7.24)
LCH
lch(71.07% 7.28 276.52)
CMYK
cmyk(10%, 7%, 0%, 27%)

Etymology

Fitted
adjective

Old English fit, fit — past-participle of fit. As a color modifier, fitted implies a neutral-and-precisely-sized-and-tailored quality, the neutral color of Savile-Row-and-Bond-Street-tailoring precisely-cut-and-fitted-to-form gentleman's-tailoring craft-finish. Sits at the neutral-and-traditional end of the grid, parallel to tailored and suited in usage.

Ash
noun

The mineral residue left after wood or coal completely combusts — calcium, potassium, and silicate that remain after carbon has gasified. Ash as a color refers to the soft pale gray of cooled hardwood ash: a soft, slightly muted gray with the matte finish of micron-scale mineral particulate. Cooler than smoke, warmer than dust, with the agricultural weight of a substance that fertilizes fields and clarifies soap-making lye.

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.

#a9aebb
Original
#aaafbc
Protanopia
#a9adbb
Deuteranopia
#a5b0b2
Tritanopia
#aeaeae
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
2.22:1
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
9.46:1

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
##A9AEBB
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.6663 0.6817 0.7287)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.019

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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