White, black text passes AA
What color is white?
white is white: #ffffff in hex, rgb(255 255 255). Black text on it reaches 21.00:1, passing WCAG AAA. Recolor (recolor.page) shows it on a real page below.
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| Format | Value |
|---|---|
| Keyword | white |
| Hex | #ffffff |
| RGB | rgb(255 255 255) |
| HSL | hsl(0 0% 100%) |
| OKLCH | oklch(100.0% 0.000 none) |
| Nearest Tailwind color | olive-50 #fbfbf9, 0.013 away in OKLab |
| White text | 1.00:1: AA fails, AAA fails, large text fails |
| Black text | 21.00:1: AA passes, AAA passes, large text passes |
About white
White is the plain description of white: OKLCH lightness 100.0%, chroma 0.000, no hue. It is one of the 16 named colors that CSS Color 4 traces to the VGA palette, by way of HTML; most of the others came from the X11 color system.
HSL and OKLCH agree on how light it is, 100% and 100.0%. Its nearest CSS named color, snow (#fffafa), is 0.012 away in OKLab, too close to tell apart by eye.
Black text on white measures 21.00:1, past the 7:1 of WCAG AAA, while white text manages only 1.00:1. In the hue-sorted table of named colors it sits between mediumvioletred and ivory.
In Tailwind CSS 4.3.3 the nearest default color is olive-50 (#fbfbf9), 0.013 away in OKLab; for the exact color, an arbitrary value such as bg-[#ffffff] works.
Tints and shades
- #ffffff
- #c8c8c8
- #949494
- #636363
- #363636
- #0f0f0f
From light to dark: no lighter step, since white is white already and 5 toward black, mixed in OKLCH a sixth of the way at a time with the hue kept. A step that would repeat its neighbor is left out.
A palette around it
- #ffffff
- #47417f
- #99c1ad
- #242239
- #b07e67
Recolor's generator, with white locked as swatch 1 and the seed taken from its hex, drew a triadic palette, three hues a third of the wheel apart: #47417f, #99c1ad, #242239, #b07e67. Open it in Recolor.
Using white
As a text color, white on a black page gives the same 21.00:1.
.notice {
background-color: white; /* #ffffff */
color: black; /* 21.00:1 */
}Common questions
Does white text pass WCAG AA on white?
No. White text measures 1.00:1 on white, under AA's 4.5:1; black text measures 21.00:1 and passes.
Can white be written in OKLCH?
Yes: oklch(100.0% 0.000 none), computed from #ffffff. A named color is an sRGB color, so its OKLCH value converts back to the same hex.
Is there a named color close to white?
Yes: snow (#fffafa) is the nearest, 0.012 away in OKLab, then mintcream at 0.015.