Information about Grey color
Also known as: Gray (Wikipedia)
The history behind the Color Name Grey
In American English, "grey" is commonly spelled "gray," which is thought to derive from the same Old English root but has been influenced by the spelling of the related French word "gris," which also means grey.
The color itself is an intermediate between black and white, representing a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is a color "without color." It is typically associated with dull, cool, cloudy, and subdued tones.
Basic facts about this digital color
The color #808080 reads as a softly muted neutral grey and feels open and friendly. Expect to see shades like this in versatile mid-ground roles, from cards to secondary buttons. In The Official Register of Color Names it is a hair away from Silver Lining (#7F7F7D). Its next-closest registered neighbors are Teravenumar (#838181) and Sword (#808284).
Technically, #808080 is a perfectly balanced RGB mix — red, green and blue all sit at 128, which is what makes it a true neutral. Accessibility-wise, black text works best on #808080: 5.3:1 contrast (passing WCAG AA) versus 3.9:1 for white. This precise shade carries the officially registered name "Grey" in the Register.
Grey color variations
View this color variations of tints, shades, tones and hues.
Grey color tints
Tints look brighter, pastel, and less intense.
Grey color shades
Shades look darker, richer, and more solid.
Why this page shows fewer blocks
Grey belongs to the Greyscale Color Family, and greyscale colors have no hue. Hue is an angle on the color wheel, and that angle only exists when a color leans toward one primary more than the others. Here all three channels are equal (R = G = B), so there is nothing to lean and no angle to measure.
Everything built on rotating that angle therefore has nothing to rotate. A complementary color is the hue 180° away — for a grey, that is the same grey. The same goes for analogous, triadic, tetradic and square harmonies. Rather than show seven identical swatches, the register leaves the Hues variation strip, the whole Harmonies section and the Tones strip out.
Tones are omitted here for a second reason. A tone is made by moving a color toward mid‑grey, and Grey already sits at the middle of the scale — there is nowhere left to move it to. Of the 16,777,216 colors in the register this happens to exactly twenty, all of them within one step of the centre.
What remains is everything that depends on lightness rather than hue. Tints and shades still work, because they move the color up and down the scale instead of around the wheel. So do the nearest named colors, the conversions and the adjacent color codes.
How the register classifies colors · All greyscale colors in the register
Alternatives to Grey color
View adjacent and very similar colors.
Nearest named colors to Grey
The closest officially registered color names in the Register, ordered by similarity.
#7F7F7D
#838181
#808284
#7C7E7E
#7D7F7C
#837E7C
#7C817C
#83857F
#848482
#848484
#808782
#827F79
Grey color backgrounds & wallpapers
Download color wallpaper / background for your Desktop PC, Tablet or Mobile phone.
Conversions between color systems and etc.
- HEX#808080
- RGB128, 128, 128
- CMYK0, 0, 0, 50
- CSSrgb(128, 128, 128)
- HSL0°, 0%, 50%
- HSL Precise0°, 0%, 50.196%
- HSV0°, 0%, 50%
- HSB0°, 0%, 50%
- Normalized R (0.0–1.0)0.502
- Normalized G (0.0–1.0)0.502
- Normalized B (0.0–1.0)0.502
- GLSLvec3(0.502, 0.502, 0.502)
- GLSL with alphavec4(0.502, 0.502, 0.502, 1.000)
- HLSL / Metalfloat3(0.502, 0.502, 0.502)
- Percentage of Red in RGB50.2%
- Percentage of Green in RGB50.2%
- Percentage of Blue in RGB50.2%
- Color FamilyGreyscale
- Saturation FamilyDesaturated
- Lightness FamilyLight
- HEX ID808080
- DECIMAL ID8421504
- Name Length4
- This page visited341 times
- Counting from2025-01-01
