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Cold Silver

#b7bfb6
Notes

Cold Silver (#B7BFB6) is a pale neutral with a mono character. It's a grayscale value, at home in typography, dividers, and the structural layer beneath stronger colors. Its HSL profile (113°, 7%, 73%) places it in the muted band at a light lightness. It works as a soft page background, card surface, or low-key divider. Avoid it for body text against white. Pair it with almost any saturated accent. It's built to sit underneath or behind stronger colors without fighting them.

HEX
#b7bfb6
RGB
rgb(183, 191, 182)
HSL
hsl(113, 7%, 73%)
HWB
hwb(113 71% 25%)
OKLCH
oklch(79.6% 0.015 142.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.7233 0.7480 0.7164)
HSV
hsv(113, 5%, 75%)
LAB
lab(76.50% -4.44 3.58)
LCH
lch(76.50% 5.70 141.17)
CMYK
cmyk(4%, 0%, 5%, 25%)

Etymology

Cold
adjective

Old English ceald, of low temperature — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues with a slight blue or blue-green shift, even within otherwise neutral grays. Cold gray, cold white: the optical impression of a low-temperature reflective surface. Sits in the neutral-and-cool corner alongside icy.

Silver
noun

Element Ag, atomic number 47 — the most reflective metal in the visible spectrum, used since antiquity for coinage, mirrors, and tableware. The color refers to freshly polished sterling silver: a clean, slightly cool bright silver with the high specular shine of a polished noble metal. Cooler than sterling, warmer than platinum.

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.

#b7bfb6
Original
#c0bdb6
Protanopia
#bebcb6
Deuteranopia
#b7bebc
Tritanopia
#bdbdbd
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
1.88:1
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
11.14:1

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
##B7BFB6
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.7233 0.7480 0.7164)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.015

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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