Color Name Finder
← All toolsPaste a hex and get the CSS color name closest to it, with the runners-up and how close each one really is. Matching happens in CIE Lab rather than raw RGB, which is the difference between #0a0a0a coming back as black and coming back as whichever dark name happens to sit nearby in channel numbers.
Also close
How to use the Color Name Finder
- Type or paste a hex value, or open the color well and pick one.
- Read the headline match — it says whether the hex is exactly that color, visually identical to it, close to it, or merely nearer to it than to anything else.
- Check the runners-up. Ties are common, and two names sometimes describe the same color: gray and grey, aqua and cyan, fuchsia and magenta.
- Use the contrast figures to decide whether the name you landed on is usable as text on white or on black.
FAQ
- How is the nearest name decided?
- By distance in CIE Lab, not in RGB. Lab is built so that equal numeric distance is roughly equal perceived difference, which is what makes the answer trustworthy at the ends of the range: a near-black comes back as black rather than as whichever dark name happens to be close in raw channel numbers.
- Why not just compare red, green and blue values?
- Because a step of 20 in RGB is a big visible change near black and almost nothing near white, so plain RGB distance systematically mislabels dark colors and near-neutrals. It is the classic failure of this feature, and it is the reason this one converts first.
- What does the delta number mean?
- It is the Lab distance between your color and the named one. Below about 2 is a difference an eye cannot separate; below 10 is close enough to use the name in conversation; above 25 you are being handed the nearest label rather than a match, and the page says so.
- Which list of names is this?
- The 148 CSS Color Level 4 keywords — the X11 list from 1980s Unix workstations, plus rebeccapurple. It is the set every browser understands, which is also why it is so uneven: nine greys in two spellings each, four slates, and a papayawhip.
