A pale gray, black text passes AA
What color is whitesmoke?
The CSS named color whitesmoke is #f5f5f5, or rgb(245 245 245): a pale gray in plain words. Black text on it reaches 19.26:1, passing WCAG AAA, and Recolor (recolor.page) can put it on a real page.
Last updated
| Format | Value |
|---|---|
| Keyword | whitesmoke |
| Hex | #f5f5f5 |
| RGB | rgb(245 245 245) |
| HSL | hsl(0 0% 96%) |
| OKLCH | oklch(97.0% 0.000 none) |
| Nearest Tailwind color | neutral-100 #f5f5f5, 0.000 away in OKLab |
| White text | 1.09:1: AA fails, AAA fails, large text fails |
| Black text | 19.26:1: AA passes, AAA passes, large text passes |
About whitesmoke
Measured in OKLCH, whitesmoke comes out at lightness 97.0%, chroma 0.000 and no hue: a pale gray.
Here HSL's lightness, 96%, lands near OKLCH's 97.0%, which is not true of every color. The CSS keyword aliceblue (#f0f8ff) is almost the same color: 0.014 apart in OKLab, under the step most people notice.
Black on whitesmoke reads at 19.26:1, enough for AAA body text; white reaches 1.09:1 and should stay off it. Its neighbors in the hue-sorted list of names are oldlace and lavenderblush.
The closest Tailwind 4.3.3 color is neutral-100, 0.000 away in OKLab, so bg-neutral-100 comes very close; bg-[#f5f5f5] gives the color itself.
Tints and shades
- #fdfdfd
- #fcfcfc
- #fafafa
- #f8f8f8
- #f7f7f7
- #f5f5f5
- #c0c0c0
- #8e8e8e
- #5f5f5f
- #343434
- #0e0e0e
From light to dark: 5 toward white 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
- #f5f5f5
- #2f9fbb
- #15282e
- #a6cada
- #385158
Around whitesmoke as swatch 1, Recolor's generator made a monochromatic palette, one hue in five lightnesses: #2f9fbb, #15282e, #a6cada, #385158, drawn from a seed fixed by its hex. Open it in Recolor.
Using whitesmoke
As a text color, whitesmoke on a black page gives the same 19.26:1.
.notice {
background-color: whitesmoke; /* #f5f5f5 */
color: black; /* 19.26:1 */
}Common questions
Does white text pass WCAG AA on whitesmoke?
No. White text measures 1.09:1 on whitesmoke, under AA's 4.5:1; black text measures 19.26:1 and passes.
Can whitesmoke be written in OKLCH?
Yes: oklch(97.0% 0.000 none), computed from #f5f5f5. A named color is an sRGB color, so its OKLCH value converts back to the same hex.
Is there a named color close to whitesmoke?
Yes: aliceblue (#f0f8ff) is the nearest, 0.014 away in OKLab, then ghostwhite at 0.014.