Gainsboro#DCDCDC, a faint gray

Gainsboro in RGB, HSL, OKLCH & more

Ready to ship: every line pastes straight into your codebase, and the whole file copies at once.

ART is Rhapsody's perceptual model. How ART works

What kind of neutral is Gainsboro?

Every color has a place in the standard vocabulary. This is Gainsboro's, measured rather than asserted.

Gainsboro is achromatic. That means no hue at all. Its red, green, and blue channels are equal, so there's no direction for a hue to point in. Only lightness. Munsell writes that as value 8.8 with chroma 0 (chroma is how vivid a color is). ISCC-NBS, the naming standard built on top of Munsell, files it under white.

Because there's no hue to reproduce, a neutral is the one kind of color that survives almost any conversion unchanged. No gamut (the range of colors a screen or a press can actually show) can clip a hue that isn't there.

Munsell coordinates and block from the ISCC-NBS system, computed by Rhapsody's own renotation inversion.

Shades of Gainsboro, lighter and darker

For hover states, washed backgrounds, and dark surfaces that still read as #DCDCDC. 13 steps, spaced evenly by eye, with the color itself sitting at its natural depth, gainsboro-200.

Tints (light surfaces; dark text passes on every one)

Midtones (the color at full strength, for brand & accent work)

Shades (dark surfaces; light text passes on every one)

Is Gainsboro accessible? Contrast with other neutrals

Strong contrast makes your work readable by everyone, and meets the WCAG standard accessibility law points at. AA is the floor; AAA is the tier worth aiming for in body text. Black text on #DCDCDC clears WCAG AAA. Every strip below is one surface, and the marks are the steps that reach AAA on it.

Rows are text, columns are background · 64 of 210 pairings reach WCAG 2.2 AAA, shown here.

Gainsboro in CMYK: one value for files, one per press

Every held press standard prints this color exactly as it is.

In CMYK, #DCDCDC is C0 · M0 · Y0 · K13.7. That is the value design tools and file formats use when no press is involved.

On press (what each standard prints)

Press values computed through the ICC characterization data each standard proofs against. Each CMYK held to prints the color exactly.

Colors similar to Gainsboro

Here are other colors similar to Gainsboro along with accessible text pairings and whether or not they're print-safe. Explore Grayscale

Colors that go with Gainsboro

Anything. A pure neutral has no complement and nothing sits across the wheel from it, so every color is safe next to #DCDCDC. If you want ready-made signals, its system ships four:

Use them as they are for status and interface work, or bring any brand color you already have; the gray will hold it.

Take Gainsboro with you

The work on this page doesn't stay here. Save a card and the color arrives in your file, your deck or your board already decided.